Phillip “Phil” Washington, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration, appears to be in trouble. Scandals and legal issues from a previous job are a drag factor.
Washington was nominated in July. The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee has yet to hold a hearing on his nomination.
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One large reason for that was that Washington was named in a search warrant in September in connection to the job he held before his current post as CEO of Denver International Airport.
Washington was the head of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority from 2015 to 2021. It is alleged that he issued a no-bid contract in the amount of $494,000 to a nonprofit group headed by one of Los Angeles County Supervisor and Metro board member Sheila Kuehl’s friends to shore up Kuehl’s support.
The warrant, secured by then-Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, resulted in a search of Kuehl’s home. Local law enforcement looked for correspondence between Kuehl and several people, including Washington.
Sen. Roger Wicker (MS), the ranking Republican member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, did not take this news well.
“When Mr. Washington was nominated in July, I expressed my skepticism surrounding his lack of experience in aviation,” Wicker said in a Sept. 14 statement. “Now I am deeply troubled to learn the nominee was named in a search warrant that ties him to allegations of corruption at LA Metro.”
Wicker said that the committee’s “vetting process” would need to bring “additional scrutiny” to bear on Washington’s tenure at LA Metro. And that the nominee’s “credibility will also be a key focus of the committee.”
For its part, the White House has decided to let the nomination “play out,” an unnamed official told CNN. But it’s unclear whether the Senate Democrats who would have to vote on Washington’s nomination want to play at all.
The September search warrant is only the latest legal headache for Washington connected to his tenure at LA Metro. In one case, he issued a no-bid contract for a nonprofit group to establish a sexual harassment hotline for the agency with a cost that worked out to $8,000 a call.
Gary Leff, author of the influential View From the Wing website, remarked on Washington’s ability to advance in spite of multiple scandals and investigations.
“It is rather shocking that he was hired in Denver and then nominated under the circumstances,” Leff told the Washington Examiner.
When Washington’s nomination was only a rumor, Eno Center for Transportation senior fellow Jeff Davis looked at Washington’s career and made the case for why Washington, who used to sit on Eno’s board of directors, could be an asset to the FAA.
“Phil Washington served as the head of the Biden-Harris transition team for the Department of Transportation in late 2020 and early 2021. Unlike other transition team members … Washington did not immediately take a role in the Administration,” Davis wrote on Eno’s website in June.
At the time of the rumored nomination, Davis admitted, “Washington has been at the Denver airport for a little less than one year” and his overall resume “is light on aviation.”
However, Davis made the case for why “in this instance, putting a relative outsider in charge of the FAA would be a feature, not a bug.”
He explained that “multiple investigations into the 737 MAX certification process revealed many instances of ‘regulatory capture,’ where FAA employees appeared to be too close with, or were overpowered by, the manufacturers they were supposed to be regulating,” and speculated, “The White House may be trying to compensate for that.”
Davis also pointed out that Washington spent 24 years in the Army, retiring as a command sergeant major. People who make it that far in the service, he said, “tend to have managerial and motivational skills and general problem-solving abilities that translate well into a wide variety of occupations and organizations.”
Washington has not had much to say publicly about the snag in his nomination, though he did sound off on another hot-button issue in aviation recently: Southwest Airlines’s end-of-year cancellations of thousands of flights, many of those in Denver.
“I think some of the things could have been handled better, most definitely,” Washington told the local television station Denver7 on Dec. 28. “And speaking constructively, I want to find out what those are and how we can do them better.”
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Washington is instituting an “after-action review” to look for all the causes of cancellations at his airport and hopes to pass on those findings to the FAA to spur future improvements.
“My message is, ‘I’m frustrated.’ I’m disappointed. Just like any traveler out there. I hate to see that in my airport,” he said.
