Metra must open up about lobbyists
What if you were on the board of a large transit agency that had been talking a lot about transparency after a highly publicized financial scandal spearheaded by the former executive director?
And what if you’d just last month raised fares for your 300,000 daily passengers by about 30 percent?
And what if you’d hired four state and federal lobbyists in December to be paid $624,000 over two years, choosing them after a lengthy evaluation process by staff and board directors?
And then, there it is on your meeting agenda, put forth by the new executive director at the request of a board director: a proposal to hire the politically connected firm that was the fifth lobbyist on your internal evaluation list.
What would you do?
If you’re the Metra board of directors, you’d go ahead and hire lobbyists Andrew Raucci and David Sullivan and agree to pay them $138,000.
That would cover a lot of round-trip fares to Chicago.
And then, if you’re Metra Executive Director Alex Clifford, you’d refuse to say which board director was pushing the lobbyists.
The new contract, as Daily Herald transportation writer Marni Pyke reported, puts Metra $33,500 over budget for lobbying this year.
Metra Director Jim LaBelle of Zion cast the lone vote against hiring the new lobbyists.
“I have a high regard for the people involved,” LaBelle said. “But we did approve four contracts in December — four is enough.”
Actually, we can’t see why Metra needs four.
We’ve often had issues with the way local transportation agencies spend so many of our tax dollars to try to pressure state and federal lawmakers into giving them more of our tax dollars. And Metra’s not alone.
Reversing its decision from January, the Regional Transportation Authority board voted last week to pay a firm founded by political power broker David Axelrod $425,000 to lobby against an effort to strip gas-tax funding for mass transit out of a controversial U.S. House transportation bill.
While it’s in the RTA’s interests to take reasonable steps against that onslaught on transit, we think RTA Director William Coulson of Glenview is right on target.
He voted against the lobbying contract, saying it cost too much and duplicates efforts by the CTA and Metra, as well as by a national organization of transit agencies to which the RTA belongs.
“Lobbyists tripping over each other” is how he put it.
In just three months, just these two agencies have committed more than $1 million to lobbyist contracts. We think it’s too much.
But Metra, if you’re going to spend money that way, at least be up front about it.