Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Metro’s Board of Directors will now have a little bit of influence from the Trump Administration.
Steve McMillin and David Horner will soon join the board, appointees from President Trump’s Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao. McMillin and Horner replace two Obama Administration appointees, Carol Carmody and David Strickland. It’s a clear priority shift from the federal government: As much as Carmody and Strickland were safety experts, McMillin and Horner specialize in budgets and finances.
McMillin, in an interview with WMAL, called the work ahead “daunting,” but looked forward to applying his knowledge to a new environment.
“What I’ve tried to do throughout my career is help persuade people and help them understand the fiscal realities of the policy choices they face,” McMillin said. “Very often, policy needs to be constrained and informed by the dollars available.”
McMillin spent most of the 2000s in the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget. He is currently a partner at US Policy Metrics, an economics and public policy consultancy firm. Horner is a partner at Hunton and Williams, where he focuses on transportation-related public-private partnerships. He served in the Bush Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy and Chief Counsel of the Federal Transit Administration.
McMillin remained non-committal on hot-button issues like the prospect of dedicated funding and increasing funding from the federal government.
“I know there’s a lot to learn here,” he said. “I want to come into this with an open mind…I don’t want to go in here thinking I have all the answers.”
Horner did not return a request for comment.
Metro’s Board Chairman, D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans, said McMillin and Horner look “impressive on paper,” and expected any learning curve to be a quick one.
“I think anyone who has a financial background, it doesn’t take much more than a week, will figure out where we are and what needs to happen,” Evans told WMAL.
Evans is intimately familiar with the system’s finances. He spent the better part of the last year touring various local government agencies, warning of Metro’s dire monetary needs in the years to come.
“Metro isn’t in a situation where we can push back on spending. It’s that we need funding,” he said.
Evans has maintained that the federal government is chief among those not pulling their weight on Metro’s funding.
“42 percent of the federal workforce rides on Metro every day, and yet the federal government doesn’t pay one penny toward the operating costs of Metro,” he said. “I think (Horner and McMillin) will find out very quickly how the federal government has shortchanged Metro and needs to step up its support on the operating side.”
The federal government contributes $150 million toward Metro’s capital budget through the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, which Evans called a “drop in the bucket.” That funding is set to expire in 2018 without an extension.
Carmody and Strickland, the two outgoing Obama-era appointees, were both safety experts, Carmody a former National Transportation Safety Board member and Strickland a former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“I’m very sad about losing both Carol and Dave,” Evans said. “Safety is the number one issue for Metro. We want to make sure that it’s a safe system, but it is a safe system.”
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