Limited public input into review of WMATA

Smoke filled room
Originally uploaded by rllayman

(Smoke filled room image from the Internet.)

From email:

COG Includes Business Advocates, Excludes Rider Advocates on Metro Task Force

Transit rider advocates sent the following letter to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, as the task force on Metro governance appointed by the Board of Trade and COG holds its first meeting at 8:30 this morning.
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Dear Chairman Brown and members of the COG Board of Directors:

We are disappointed by your decision to not include transit rider advocates on the WMATA Governance Commission, initiated by the Greater Washington Board of Trade (BOT) and co-sponsored by the Council of Governments (COG).

During the June 9th COG meeting, opposition to making the Commission inclusive of rider advocates was based on the false notion that no representatives of any advocacy group had yet been appointed to the task force. The BOT has a network of dedicated, thoughtful people. However, as a letter from the BOT's president and chair published on its website makes clear, "regional advocacy" is part of the organization's mission. The BOT primarily represents large businesses with heavy financial resources and influence and also provides the most significant, recognized endorsements of major candidates including Governors, Mayors and County Executives and Chairs.

There is cause for concern that the Board of Trade has specific intentions from the outset: to give the elected chief executives of Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia the sole authority to appoint members of the WMATA Board of Directors. It is important that the Commission give thorough, objective consideration to different options to improve governance.

By stripping the authority from local elected officials in our region to govern WMATA, the WMATA Board would become less accountable to the public, much like the situation with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Historically, WMATA Board members from Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia consistently have been more accessible and responsive to the public than those appointed by the State of Maryland. Case in point: the varying responses to public input during the recent funding crisis. There is something to be said for elected officials who are closer to the people being accustomed to the responsibility of being accessible to the public.

COG failed to include advocates who have been dedicated on behalf of Metro riders to secure more funding, improve service, and yes, increase Metro accountability. Governance at WMATA is a legitimate issue to examine, though the urgent need is to secure stable and sufficient funding to provide safe, reliable and efficient service for riders. For a panel that purportedly will focus on how to improve governance and accountability at WMATA, the process by which this task force has been set up does not help promote public confidence in COG's openness or inclusiveness.

We also wish to record another concern about the process: our letter, and a similar one from at least one other group, were not included in the packet of information provided to the COG Board of Directors, even while an unrelated letter from business groups about the I-95/395 HOT lanes was included. Therefore, our original letter - dated May 25, 2010 - was not available for your consideration in the official record.

Going forward, we hope for robust, inclusive and meaningful public participation throughout the process.

Sincerely,

Ben Ross, Action Committee for Transit
Stewart Schwartz, Coalition for Smarter Growth
David Alpert, Greater Greater Washington
Roger Diedrich, Virginia Chapter, Sierra Club

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See the article, "City as a Growth Machine" by Molotch to better understand how groups like the Greater Washington Board of Trade function and what their agenda is.

See the past blog entry "St. Louis regional transit planning process as a model for what needs to be done in the DC Metropolitan region" for my point that a wide-ranging public process, not a closed process limited to the traditional political and economic elite, is necessary within the DC region to restore the role of and trust in public transit, specifically with WMATA.