Community Corner
Editorial: The Metra scandal and 2014
The pols want to make this go away before the election. Don't let them.
Brad O'Halloran, Metra Chairman, throws his hands up in disbelief at Alex Clifford's version of what went on at Metra. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune / July 17, 2013)
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July 29, 2013
The last time an Illinois governor decided to show some leadership about mass transit, we ended up with "Free Rides for Seniors." Remember that? Even the elderly beneficiaries of Rod Blagojevich's folly recognized it as a gratuitous political gesture, but it took more than three years for the next governor and the General Assembly to rescind the perk.
With the Metra rail system in meltdown over the ex-CEO's $718,000 hush-money buyout, Bill Daley — Gov. Pat Quinn's declared opponent in next year's Democratic gubernatorial primary — is suddenly running as a transit reformer.
The Metra board should resign, he says. The Regional Transportation Authority is "an employment agency to politicians." Daley wants to shake up the Metra board, gut the RTA and use the savings to keep fares down.
Daley's not the first person to suggest these things. Everyone knows the transit system is, well, a train wreck. But Quinn's biggest contribution to this discussion lately has been to pronounce House Speaker Michael Madigan, whose fingerprints are all over the Metra scandal, a "man of character."
So be grateful there are elections next year. Candidates for statewide and legislative offices are going to be all over this. And that means the Metra fiasco won't fade from memory, despite the best efforts of the perpetrators and their patrons.
Their plan was for Metra CEO Alex Clifford to take his money — your money — and go away quietly, silenced by the mutual confidentiality clause in his separation agreement.
Metra Chairman Brad O'Halloran insisted the agreement cloaked no wrongdoing, but we learned otherwise when the House Mass Transit Committee demanded to see the eight-page memo that led to Clifford's exit.
In that memo and in later testimony before the RTA, Clifford accused O'Halloran, board member Larry Huggins, Madigan and others of pressuring him to make personnel moves and manipulate contracts to benefit their political allies. When he refused, Clifford says, they decided to oust him.
The pols say they did nothing wrong, but it's clear they knew the public would see things differently. That's why they fought so hard to keep the memo secret.
Now what?
First, this failed Metra board must go. Second, there must be serious legislative changes to prevent this from happening again.
There's no need to wait for the legislative and executive inspectors general to complete their reviews, no need for Metra to follow through on its plan to hire a former federal prosecutor to investigate, no need for the RTA to finish its audit. We expect they'll all find that no laws were broken, no ethics violations occurred — just a million or so in public money spent to quiet a whistle-blower who wouldn't go along with business as usual.
That much is already known. Yet Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel still wants to "get to the bottom" of things before deciding whether Huggins, who represents Chicago on the Metra board, should keep his job. Other public officials are ignoring calls to dump the board members they appointed, too. Why? To paraphrase Daley: Transit boards are employment agencies for politicians.
Our system has four such boards — one for each of the region's transit agencies plus the RTA to oversee them. There are 47 board members in all, each a proxy for some elected official. It's all about turf and patronage, not about keeping the buses and trains running on time.
The legislative fixes would start, then, with streamlining the governance of the transit system. That means fewer boards, with a merit system for selecting members and a clear process for removing them if necessary. Their focus must be on customer service and taxpayer value, not on providing jobs and contracts for people with political connections. The transit agencies must be required to work together — universal fare system, anyone? — and to stop paying lobbyists to compete with each other for funding. And apparently the law needs to spell out that hush-money separation agreements are not acceptable.
None of this will happen because of an ethics investigation or an RTA audit. It will happen because of leadership. Not just sound bites, but solutions.
The politicians who made this mess hope they can outlast the scandal and go back to doing things their way. Don't let them. Put them on notice that you won't vote for anyone who's not mad as hell about the Metra mess — and determined to do something about it.
Copyright © 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC
