|
Who's
in the Driver's Seat?
As
Gov. Kaine faces another bruising battle over
transportation policy with House Republicans, he
has yet to make key transportation appointments in
his own administration.
by
Peter Galuszka
In
his campaign for governor last year, Timothy M.
Kaine made it a key goal to resolve the state's
woeful highway problems. In debates
and press statements, he hammered at the themes
of unclogging roads, rebuilding worn-out bridges and
aligning transportation with land use planning. “I want to make 2006 a year about
transportation,” he said.
Nine months into The Year of Transportation,
the Kaine administration has yet to make several key
appointments for executing his policy. The post of Commissioner of the
Virginia Department of Transportation has remained
unfilled since July, 2005, when the highly
regarded Philip A. Shucet left office. Five
positions on the powerful, 17-member Commonwealth
Transportation Board (CTB) expired in June and no
one has been appointed in their place.
Explanations
range
from the relatively low pay of the VDOT
commissioner’s job to tremendous global
competition for highly-qualified managers, from the
time-consuming nature of finding qualified people for the
CTB
to the unappealing task of guiding policy when there’s hardly any money to
back it up.
It’s
unclear whether the leadership void is
affecting transportation policy. Neither VDOT nor the
Governor’s office responded to requests for
comment. But others did share their observations.
“I don’t think
it’s impacting policy; there’s no money to
spend anyway,” says Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council.
But the matter is serious. “Choosing members of
the CTB is one of the most important decisions you
make.”
Going
without a commissioner for so long is like guiding
a ship through a storm without a captain.
“It’s all in a holding pattern,” says Del.
Leo C. Wardrup Jr., R-Virginia Beach, who heads
the transportation committee in the state House of
Delegates. “Some things aren’t getting done
such as more private-public partnership projects
or getting a more aggressive review of proposed
plans.”
Adds
Shucet, who is now president of Dragas Management
Corp., a Virginia Beach-based homebuilder:
"It’s very important that that job be
resolved soon."
The
hunt for a commissioner does seem to be
getting more intense. Sources say that four
finalists have been culled from applicants and
that a decision may come in September. The search
is being coordinated by Korn/Ferry International,
a global executive search firm based in New York,
and by a bipartisan commission.
One
of the candidates is interim commissioner,
Gregory A. Whirley, a CPA who is regarded as being
good with finances but lacking in engineering or
construction management background. Two
other candidates, according to The
Virginian-Pilot, include Barbara Reece, VDOT's
chief financial officer, who worked closely with
Shucet; and David Erkin, who recently resigned as
director of the Idaho Transportation Department.
What’s
needed for the job is an individual with strong
experience in erecting or maintaining large infrastructures. The problem,
according to The Virginian-Pilot,
is a strong global economy has pumped up demand
for well-qualified
people in places as disparate as China and Las
Vegas. Post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq offer
jobs that pay well into the six figures to
construction managers capable of supervising the
repair of bombed-out roads, bridges and dams.
Virginia pays its
transportation commissioner between $105,000 to
$180,000. That is at the low end of the typical
salary range for a private-sector assistant
director of a large-scale infrastructure
management project. Adding insult to injury is
that any commissioner would face serious
budgetary limitations due to the the General
Assembly's inability to raise taxes. Says Michael
Toalson,
executive director of the Home Builders
Association of Virginia: “The current status of
the system would have candidates asking
themselves, ‘Do I want to be involved in the
maintenance of roads or in the future of
transportation?'”
While the public-sector job
doesn’t pay as well as a comparable
private-sector position, Shucet maintains that the VDOT
would look good on any eecutive's resume. “You still have a $3
billion budget and it’s a major CEO job.” When he took the job in 2005,
he says, “I knew
what the ... situation was and I balanced that
against my personal growth.” What’s more,
“the General Assembly was very kind to me” --
raising his pay by about $40,000 yearly. VDOT pays its commissioner
among the top salaries in the country.
By
most accounts, Shucet did a superior job. The
construction trade journal Engineering
News-Record rated him one of the best
construction managers of 2005 for such successes
as developing “the most comprehensive online
project status tracking system in any state
DOT.” He also reduced the margin of error on
projects and increased the number of jobs finished
on time.
By
raising the managerial bar, Shucet may be
inadvertently responsible for making it so hard to
find a successor.
Meanwhile,
there’s a chicken or egg question: Should the CTB
members be selected after the commissioner is
picked? Or does it matter?
The
CTB is one of the more powerful boards in the
state. It establishes the administrative policies
for Virginia's transportation system, allocates
highway funding to specific projects, locates
routes and steers funding to airports, seaports
and public transportation. If Gov. Kaine plans to
align transportation with land use planning, he
will need a board that shares his philosophy.
The
five CTB members whose terms expired June 30 --
none of them appointed by Kaine -- are
still serving. John J. “Butch” Davies III, a
Culpeper lawyer, says he still meets regularly
about board matters and that a full board meeting
is slated for September regardless of whether
board members’ terms have expired. Davies traces
the slowness about selecting new board members to
the tenure of former Commissioner Shucet “who
did a whale of a job” heightening professional
standards. “The governor is keeping his options
open to plug in people with special talents.”
Another
board member, Hunter R. Watson, a Farmville
financial adviser whose term expired in June, says,
“It’s simply that the governor and the
secretary of state haven’t gotten around to
getting it done.” The Kaine administration has
been slow appointing members to a number of
university boards as well, he observes.
Mary
Lee Carter of Fredericksburg, another CBT member
whose term expired in June, says that the General
Assembly should share the blame for the tardiness
in picking board replacements. The legislature had
to go into an extra session after it failed to
come to agreement on a budget this winter. Other board members whose terms expired in June
are Robert F. Sevila of Leesburg and Helen Dragas
of the Hampton Roads area.
The
CTB has its share of critics. “The
Commonwealth Transportation Board all too often
rubber stamps the decisions of the Department of
Transportation, although they are well-meaning
people,” says Wardrup. He also attacks the
qualifications of some board members: “There are no special
credentials that dignify their positions and this
is one of the most important boards in the state.”
Miller
of the Piedmont Environmental Council agrees that
the CTB is merely a rubber-stamp body. “The
current board is unwilling to demand independent
scrutiny (of VDOT recommendations),” he says.
“They ask five questions and vote yes.” Miller
says that his group would like to see “more push
back” from the CTB.
As
the search for a new commissioner and CTB board
members continues, transportation remains a
priority issue for the legislature. Sen.
Martin E. Williams, R-Newport News,
who heads the Senate Transportation Committee, has
announced a summit this September so local law-makers can reach a consensus on funding
transportation improvements in Hampton Roads. Soon
thereafter, the full General Assembly will convene
in a special session to address taxation issues.
Lawmakers still
appear to be divided over the
issue of new taxes for transportation. Kaine and
the Senate pushed for tax increases earlier
in the year, but the House of Delegates -- backed
by the public, according to recent polls --
refused to go along. In the special session, the
House leadership is likely to propose radical
changes to state transportation strategy as an
alternative to taxes. This much seems clear: If
Kaine can't even fill key transportation positions
in his administration, which he has control over,
he'll have a hard time staying in the driver's
seat during the special session.
--
August 29, 2006
|
