Regional Spat Complicates Metro Management
When we found out earlier this year that Richard White, WMATA's troubled general manager, would be replaced by District Department of Transportation Director Dan Tangherlini, we were happy. Tangherlini had long been known for being approachable and affable, a young and ambitious civil servant dedicated to improving service and quality in his day-to-day functions. Those qualities translated quickly into his work at Metro, where he visited with the rank and file, encouraged riders to offer comments and critiques, and started streamlining the agency's notorious bureaucracy.
But much like a teacher substituting for a colleague on maternity leave, Tangherlini remains the agency's "interim" chief, anxiously waiting to be confirmed or replaced. Today the Post is reporting that WMATA's Board of Directors, at the behest of its Virginia representatives, will launch a national search to identify candidates for the job. According to the article, representatives from both the District and Maryland sided with confirming Tangherlini, a move that didn't fly with Virginia's reps, who see Tangherlini as too focused on D.C. to effectively navigate the regional transit network:
Maryland and District members have pressed to appoint Tangherlini permanently. But Virginia officials have balked because they are concerned that Tangherlini's chief political backing is from the District and Maryland, said Gerald E. Connolly (D), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, which appoints Virginia's representatives to the Metro board.We'd like to think so, but there's more here than meets the eye."Virginia has no beef against Dan Tangherlini at all," Connolly said. "We just don't know him."
Connolly asked, "Can somebody so long associated with the District, can he rise above a D.C.-centric perspective and be the region's general manager?"
A few weeks back, we highlighted a column by Steve Eldridge, the Examiner's transit writer. In it, he strangely alleged that the District was somehow maneuvering to take control of Metro, part of a larger plot to force Maryland and Virginia to have less of a say in the system's management while having to pay more for its operation. It seems that Virginia transit officials actually buy into this idea, as evidenced by one of Eldridge's more recent columns. In it, he writes:
Sources say that Virginia is prepared for the District and Maryland to propose significant changes in the funding structure. They say that they are working hard to come up with dedicated funding sources for Metro but that they are “being railroaded by Maryland and D.C.”In essence, Virginia seems to think that some regional beef exists, with them lined up against the District and Maryland. Their response? A national search, whose purpose may be less the search for a competent candidate and more a process of extracting concessions from Maryland and D.C.
We're still somewhat unaware of the behind-the-scenes dynamics that are motivating these suspicions, but we're guessing Virginia is, as Eldridge argued, trying to push more of the system's funding onto D.C. and Maryland. In fact, under a current plan pushed by the two, Metro's funding would be based on the number of people from each jurisdiction using it, leaving Virginia with the highest bill -- something they are fighting tooth and nail to prevent. Beyond that, Virginia wants Metro's general manager to push the Orange Line extension to Dulles forward -- which Tangherlini has done.
We hope that this national search serves to prove that Tangherlini is currently the best man for the job. He has served Metro well in his short time atop the agency, and one can only think that he'd be in an even better position if the Metro board would just up and drop the "interim" from his title. Regional tension is no reason to derail the candidacy of a promising civil servant.