Photo by T.D. Ford
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton got a boost in her campaign to review the operations of the government-sponsored corporation that oversees Union Station, as she and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking minority member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, sent a letter to the Transportation Department requesting a full audit of the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation.
Rahall and Norton are asking the department’s inspector general to dig into the finances of the USRC, which they write went without any Congressional oversight from its creation in 1983 to a set of hearings in 2008. Norton is the top Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees the USRC, which right now is trying to execute a many-sided renovation of the transportation hub.
The USRC, the City Paper’s Lydia DePillis noted in a cover story earlier this month about the Union Station overhaul, is a relatively small outfit that deals with some very big partners—Amtrak; Ashkenazy, which is leasing the retail space; the National Park Service, which owns it; the District Department of Transportation and a host of other agencies.
With such a comprehensive rebuilding effort underway to expand waiting areas, upgrade the retail space and make the rest of the station more efficient while maintaining its beaux-art appeal and with federal funding uncertain, Rahall and Norton say an audit of the USRC is particularly urgent:
Considering the unprecedented plans underway, some to occur simultaneously, assessing the financial condition of this asset is necessary to protect the significant federal investment and to avoid another cycle of the disrepair that once led to the shutdown of the facility. Particularly today, when there are no federal funds to assist Union Station as Congress did before, it is essential that the Congress have a definitive audit of the financial viability and management of USRC.
That seems to be in line with what Norton told DePillis. “I don’t feel like I know anything about Union Station,” Norton said in the City Paper article.
