The riders group that advises Metro is calling for sweeping changes designed to bring more public accountability and efficiency to the transit system.
Recommendations include installing a CEO rather than a general manager as head of the system, lifting limitations on public comment periods, enforcing better attendance from board members and requiring that some members be elected.
The Riders Advisory Council’s draft of recommendations will be presented Wednesday evening at Metro’s headquarters in the District. The public can comment until the council presents its final draft to the board of directors on Dec. 1.
The governance report comes after last year’s Red Line crash triggered substantial scrutiny of Metro. The U.S. Government Accountability Office and a Greater Washington Board of Trade task force also are conducting studies, with the Board of Trade panel scheduled to announce its findings Wednesday.
“We felt if people were going to be talking about governance, we wanted to make sure the riders’ voice would be heard on those issues,” said Frank DeBernardo, chairman of the advisory council.
The 39-page report calls on Metro board members to establish guidelines for their roles for better consistency in the board’s governance. To that end, the board should elect its chairman instead of annually rotating the position.
A CEO should be hired, which would give Metro a visionary head, the report said. The board also should be partly comprised of elected officials representing jurisdictions where rider population is highest, and all board members should ride Metro regularly, it said.
Attendance at meetings was a particularly pointed issue, and the council said members who could not attend regularly should be removed. In August, The Washington Examiner reported that Vice Chairman Marcell Solomon had missed half his board meetings over the previous 18 months — including a key vote on a New Carrollton development in his jurisdiction of Prince George’s County.
The board also should be consistent in how it lets staff answer to the public.
“Staff sometimes feel a tension between the chance of getting reprimanded for not soliciting rider input before presenting something, and the chance of getting reprimanded for talking about something to members of the public before the board members have had a chance to review it,” the report said.
That accountability also includes allowing public comment before all meetings and repealing the rule limiting an individual’s comment to once every three months.
The current rule “inherently assumes that the testimony from the individuals … is burdensome rather than useful,” the report said.
