As legislation proposed by , Virginia leaders and the existing board remain tied up in court over the current membership.
A Fairfax County Circuit Court judge ruled against Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) on Monday, leaving one seat on the MWAA board vacant as the parties resolve the dispute. McDonnell attempted to remove — a Democratic appointee who has come under fire for a $9,000 plane ticket to Prague for a transportation conference that MWAA authorized — and replace him with Caren Merrick, a Republican who lost her run for delegate in the 31st District last fall.
At issue is whether McDonnell had the authority to remove Martire before his term ended. Sec. of Transportation Sean Connaughton told the Washington Post that Martire was removed for his "abuse of ethical issues."
Martire, who Republicans have blamed for MWAA's push to require a project labor agreement for the Metro Silver Line's Phase 2, has sued to keep his seat. Part of the issue stems from whether expense concerns highlighted by a recent review of the board by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Inspector General constitute abuse, despite having been authorized. The entire MWAA board had previously backed the PLA, with the apparent coordination of Virginia Sec. of Transportation Sean Connaughton.
So while the dispute is resolved, Virginia has one less representative on the board, which Wolf hopes to transfer almost entirely to Virginia control.
"We continue to maintain that there is no legal or factual cause for my removal from the board, which is the requirement set forth in federal and Virginia statute," Martire said Tuesday. "The governor once again has failed to present any evidence of cause for removal, and we look forward to moving forward with our case."
Tell us: Should McDonnell continue to push for Martire's removal from the MWAA board?
In the past, other MWAA Board members have taken junkets to Hawaii and elsewhere for Airports Council International events of limited benefit to operations at our airports. It is time for MWAA to make clear in public its permitted travel policies - and include in its annual budget, an allowance for travel. It is one thing to travel on somebody else's cost for primarily pleasure, but if the travel is for achieving a legitimate business result, most of us would condone reasonable travel costs. To the best of my knowledge, while travel to and from and attendance costs for MWAA Board meetings is reimbursed, their time at Board meetings is not compensated
1. Was the governor justified in removing Mr. Martire? 2. Should the governor continue to fight in court? The court will decide the first question, but it's not clear cut and easy. The court just ruled that the governor hasn't presented the evidence that Mr. Martire did anything to warrant being removed, according to the MWAA rules. This means both sides are going to spend months in court and we all are going to have to pay for it. In my fiscally conservative opinion, the bargain solution is to drop the legal fight and instead just change the MWAA rules, which, presumably, could be done without the expense of a protracted legal battle. Its sounds to me as though the Governor ultimately wants to change the whole MWAA board because they all have their hands dirty on one thing or another. If so, why not focus on that rather than paying through the teeth to go 10 rounds in court over this one guy?
Veterans Administration Rejects Project Labor Agreements; Now Its Construction Projects are Fraught with Problems WASHINGTON, DC -- After outright rejecting the use of Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for its ambitious plans to construct several new hospital facilities across the United States, the US Department of Veterans Affairs is now experiencing critical cost-overruns, massive scheduling delays, expensive quality issues, and accusations concerning the use of undocumented workers on projects being funded with taxpayer dollars. The $600 million VA hospital project in Lake Nona, Florida is a prime example. A congressional field hearing conducted August 13, 2012 uncovered the fact that the project is now in excess of $100 million over-budget and is approximately a year behind schedule. The general contractor responsible for the project, Brasfield and Gorrie (B&G), is a member of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) a notorious anti-union contracting group that fiercely defends and promotes a business model predicated upon the use of a low-wage, low-skill, easily exploitable workforce. In addition to the cost overruns and scheduling issues, the field hearing uncovered the fact that there are numerous quality issues arising from this project, including rust and mold issues that will almost certainly add to the final, escalating cost of this project.
Sadly, the 1.2-million-square-foot hospital under construction at Lake Nona Medical City isn't the only VA project experiencing these types of problems. Across the country, many VA medical construction projects are also far behind schedule. Of the four VA hospitals presently under construction, three are more than a year behind schedule, according to the U.S. House Committee on Veteran's Affairs. Among the 55 VA medical clinics authorized by Congress since 1998, five are completed, while 38 are behind schedule, and more than a third of those are delayed at least three years. One Jacksonville, FL clinic is more than 13 years behind schedule. "In 2010, we specifically warned Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki that each and every one of these issues would arise if the VA embraced a 'low road' approach to its construction procurement policies," said Sean McGarvey, President of the Building and Construction Trades Department. "It's sad that taxpayer dollars are being wasted while the VA learns an inconvenient truth that was conceived by Ben Franklin over 200 years ago: 'The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the cheap price is forgotten.'"
People try to justify the Sardinia trip by claiming that MWAA Board members need to educate themselves on rail, etc. But the result of this 'education' is Silver Line construction prices that are nearly two times what they should be. I think somebody should have looked at the costs of the Fairfield Metro rail station ($40 million and very comparable to our $101 million Rt 28 station.) and parking garages (should be maybe as much as $17,000 per space in the DC area, maybe less here in the suburbs, but MWAA handed us a price of $34,000 per space). It certainly seems that the tens of thousands of expenses I'm seeing mentioned in the press might not have resulted in a very good education, especially when the MWAA Board members could have confirmed these figures in simple web searches costing much less.
2.) The Governor should continue the fight unless it is clear from the case law that "cause" does not exist. This situation is bound to come up in the future so we may as well delineate now what behavior is reason enough to terminate someone's position on the board. Plus, I think Martire's trip to Sardinia wasn't justified under any circumstances. He took advantage of a system in which he was allowed to run wild with only his conscience as his guide. With regard to focusing solely on Martire, like Bob Bruhns, I would like to see the entire Board wiped clean of anyone who took advantage of the lax to non-existent rules regarding travel, dining expenses, and cronyism with regard to non-compete contracts.
Here is a link to the preliminary IG report. http://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/dot/files/MWAA%20Interim%20Letter_5-15-12.pdf
Rob is correct that the Dulles Rail project is nowhere near economically and financially feasible. Why else would WMATA, which will operate the Silver Line, refuse to release detailed information on projected ridership, revenues, costs and subsidies needed? Virtually no politician or Chamber of Commerce official will discuss alternatives to DTR tolls. Nobody seems to have the guts to say that transit riders should pay most project capital costs and operating costs. Misconduct does not appear confined to the MWAA Board. A federal investigation of WMATA, their relationships and conflicts of interest involving various people, from both government and private sector, is needed. The final IG report is not likely until after the November elections. Expect further major revelations of misconduct. The MWAA Board approves all major contracts. It seems likely that some, or most, no bid awards were made at the behest of certain Board members. In November 2012, within days of Congress's approval of Congressman Wolf's MWAA Board reform measures, MWAA paid $100,000 (as I recall) on a non-competitive basis for a law firm to produce a brief claiming the Congressional action to be illegal.
The text of Congressman Wolf's new bill HR 6356 has not yet been posted online.
Also, I'm not sure exactly how it helps the middle class to burden this region with a near-double pricetag, PLUS interest on the great big pile of money that will have to be borrowed to pay that near-double price. Actually, it's going to be quite a burden for generations, isn't it. No doubt making wild claims is the reason you use a pen name - you won't have to answer for the stories you tell. It's classic Dulles Rail deception tactics. People need to keep this in mind.
http://restonweb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5732&start=255 Scroll down to the second post, it's at the bottom of the post. I posted plain text and a link to a copy of the original pdf.
"There is no major transportation project anywhere in the country of this scale that is being built so heavily on the backs of local funding," says Brown. Federal funding covers about one-sixth of the Silver Line's costs.
http://www.datatrans.org/presentations/102011-DRPT-update.pdf
The line was sold as critically important rail to the Dulles Airport - until it was started and under way, and MWAA's Board just started spending money because it was fun. That's when we found out that the Dulles Airport station was mostly for airport employees! This Silver Line project, formerly known as Dulles Rail, has been a pack of lies since it went political around 2002. Now that we are locked in, the truth can finally come out - not only the unworkable tolls, and not only the clown show in MWAA's boardroom, but also the bottleneck at the Rosslyn Tunnel, and WMATA's other maintenance and capital needs... and who knows, we might even see an official acknowledgement that the Dulles Rail project was massively overpriced, and that the Dulles Airport station should have been a dead-end spur, rather than a big expensive elevated loop.
30th Anniversary Luncheon We could take a page out of your book. You ought to be high-fiving one another. You know what this corridor has done. It’s about the vision thing. You had a vision if you could connect Dulles Airport to downtown. It’s an economic corridor with an opportunity for good paying jobs. Driving out, I see all those people building Phase 1. It will be that way in Phase 2. Your friends and neighbors will have jobs. That’s what this is about. This will be a model for the rest of the country about how people came together to talk and solve problems. This-the Silver line-should be named the Wolf line. Without their vision. That’s why we got involved, why Metro is involved.
The nay-sayers don't want to "come together" to help provide a future for our residents, yet, they're mostly the ones who also complain about people living off of public assistance. Its ridiculous.
At best, you confused Ray LaHood with Frank Wolf, kdk. Ray LaHood was the guest speaker at the Washington Airports Task Force 30th Anniversary Luncheon. And if you look at the reports of that meeting, those vision and model points were coming from LaHood. LaHood calls Metro's Silver Line model for the country WTOP , August 13, 2012 http://www.wtop.com/149/2991855/LaHood-Silver-Line-is-model-for-country Mr. LaHood was talking about this Silver Line rail line being a model for the rest of the country, and that's exactly what I am afraid will happen - a model of a premature implementation of a bad design with out of control costs, winding up costing nearly two times what it should cost, because of a Board of madhouse management, handing money to each other, and hiding everything from the rest of us, and because of a total failure of oversight by our complicit elected government and its transportation agencies, and because of a complicit news media playing along with the game. The pubic needs to wake up, NOW.
Those members of the MWAA Board who stood by, and said and did nothing about the abuses that went on, need to be sent to Hollywood to make comedy movies or something, instead of jacking up the costs of item after item of this rail line. Whoever controls this rail project from now on, should be (1) competent in rail transit and (2) concerned about the effects of their handiwork on the people of Northern Virginia. The mistake that loaded the Board with various political operatives and fund-raisers must not be repeated - we simply can not afford it.
Leo Schefer, long time head of WATF said that there are two challenges facing us: 1. How to arrange funding for Phase 2 to complete the project to Dulles. 2. How to achieve reform of MWAA Board. Rob Jackson had it right when he talked about the transfer of wealth from the middle class to a few wealthy landowners but he omitted to mention the transfer of wealth from Outside the Beltway to Inside the Beltway. $$ billions over the next 50 years thanks to incompetent politicians and smart growth advocates. The USEPA (and smart growthers) wants to suck $$ billions more of your money for worms! In answer to Rob Jackson's comment about funding of Dulles Rail, the original WMATA compact jurisdictions, having received about $10 billion in federal grants to complete the first 103 miles of Metrorail, voted circa 2001 to not fund any future extensions of Metrorail.
Those words I quoted were from the Washington Post. They weren't mine. Nevertheless, what did Mr. Martire report when he got back? That smartphones can be usefull tools for airports to communicate with passengers. That's what we got for the $10,000 vacation to Sardinia.