Gilliam Retires

Fred Gilliam (Photo by Lee Nichols)

No one was singing "Ding-Dong, the Witch Is Dead" (out loud, anyway), but there was likely a collective sigh of relief among both supporters and critics of Capital Metro last week when CEO and President Fred Gilliam finally announced his retirement, effective Oct. 16.

While those close to the transit authority generally said Gilliam's tenure had its ups and downs, it will likely be most remembered for the downs of its last couple of years: a commuter rail system that still has not debuted long after it was originally scheduled to start, a labor strike, and a financial crisis.

But despite public perception that Gilliam may be jumping from – or was pushed from – a sinking ship, he told the press last Wed­nes­day that his decision was purely financial, not political. "Today is the last day that I can accept" an early retirement package offered by the Cap Metro board of directors earlier this year, said Gilliam, 67. "If I miss the window of opportunity, I will not be able to take advantage of the early retirement. ... If I miss it, it's just like throwing money away."

Asked if local elected officials had pressured him to call it quits – specifically, state Sen. Kirk Watson is rumored to have told Gilliam to leave or be forced out – Gilliam said, "I cannot confirm that." Watson would not confirm it either.

Gilliam added that he would not have retired if the package hadn't been dangled before him. "There's never a good time" to retire, said Gilliam. "This organization ... always has projects going on. You just never come to a good point in life when you're the leader of it that you're going to have that opportunity where you don't have anything to do."

Does he have any regrets? "I wish we had not established an opening date for the rail as quickly as we did," Gilliam said, referring to the original fall 2008 start-up date that has since been pushed back to the first quarter of 2010 at the earliest. "That has created more negative news."

The reaction of board members to Gilliam's retirement was mixed. "I am impressed with Fred Gilliam," said Leander Mayor John Cow­man. "I think what he came into and what he went through to get us to where we are is like night and day. ... The efficiency of the system, the more businesslike atmosphere that we're headed toward – not there yet, but we're headed toward – he's the leader, and he went through hell."

"He did the best he could with what he had to work with," said board chair and Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gomez. She said people should look toward both a failure of Cap Metro to establish sound financial policies early in its existence (it was created in 1985; Gilliam has been CEO since 2002) and unanticipated problems converting freight rail tracks to commuter rail as part of the story. "We can't totally blame him for the mistakes. He is highly respected within the transit industry."

"It's probably best categorized as up and down," said Austin Mayor Pro Tem Mike Mar­tinez, the board's strongest critic of Gilliam. "Fred was brought in to get rail up and running. The first election we lost, the second one we prevailed, but now we're struggling again. We've lost community confidence, and the rail line isn't up and running.

"It's time for a leadership change," he continued. "I think Fred is a good man who has nothing but the best of intentions for his community and for Cap Metro, but we are struggling right now with organization morale, with [finding] a leader that has an organization going in a clear direction."

Predictably, Jay Wyatt, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1091, which represents most of Cap Metro's drivers and mechanics, was less charitable. "I think this place has been pushed down below the ground because of his mismanagement of this place," Wyatt said. "I hope the board will be wise enough to go out and find somebody that knows what they're doing. ... [Not] how [former board chair] Lee Walker hired him. Do a national search to find the best qualified person."

Another perspective comes from longtime Capital Metro critic Gerald Daugherty, the former Travis County commissioner who was voted out of office last November: "It was probably time for Fred to go," Daugherty says. But he puts more of the blame on Walker's push for rail. "Most of the things that have happened the last 10 years have happened on the watch of one person that is no longer there. ... The demise of this organization – and I have said it for a long time – rail will put this entity on an unsustaining path of not being able to do what public transit in Austin needs to do, and that is have a superior bus system where most people can get around."

Outside the board, Watson – who chairs the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, responsible for regional transportation planning – said Gilliam's retirement "comes at an opportune time" and he hopes that a new board (created from state legislation Watson got passed in the spring) will complement a new manager. Watson said he hopes the board will mainly focus on a new CEO with strong management skills over specific transit experience: "I don't even care if he can spell 'bus,'" said Watson, giving the example of General Motors looking outside its industry for a new CEO.

The name of current executive vice president and Chief Development Officer Doug Allen has been thrown about a lot as Gilliam's possible replacement. Asked if he wanted the job, Allen said, "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

"The next CEO – or general manager, which is what it really should be titled – is going to have to come in with a clear understanding that community confidence has to be regained," said Martinez. "A clear, definitive path moving forward, and how we achieve that, the goals and objectives, needs to be laid out."