If critics think the recent problems at Capital Metro are due to poor leadership, then decisions made in the next few weeks may please them, at least temporarily. State Sen. Kirk Watson‘s Senate Bill 1263, passed in this year’s legislative session, guarantees at least a partial change in the Cap Metro board of directors, along with some general personnel shuffling.
The board currently has seven members: two appointed by the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (a body of Central Texas elected officials that drives transportation policy in the region), two Austin City Council members, a Travis County commissioner, a Williamson County elected official, and a city council member of a Travis County city other than Austin (appointed by peers).
Watson’s bill, trying to give more power to Cap Metro’s main city (that being Austin) and bring better management and financial expertise to the board, adds a member and changes up the mix to three CAMPO appointees (one elected official, one person with at least 10 years of financial/accounting experience, and one with at least 10 years executive experience), two city of Austin appointees (at least one of whom must be an elected official), one Travis County appointee and one Williamson County appointee (each of whom must live or work within Cap Metro’s service area), and an elected official from a city other than Austin.
Jockeying for those positions has begun. First, some vacancies popped up: Travis County Commissioner Margaret Gómez – possibly wanting to devote her full attention to a March Democratic primary challenge from former Austin City Council Member Raul Alvarez – said she would be stepping down from the board chair position. This summer, Manor City Council Member Jamie Jatzlau moved out of Manor, making her ineligible for the small-cities seat.
CAMPO’s appointees are also guaranteed to change. A list of eight applicants for the two nonofficeholder positions was released earlier this month, and current board member John Treviño (recently plagued by health problems) was not on it. Then, on Tuesday, the eight were whittled down to four, and the other CAMPO appointee, Mike Manor, did not make the cut.
The Survivors:
• John Langmore, a transportation and land-use consultant who’s a former policy director for the Texas House Transportation Committee and currently serves on the boards of Envision Central Texas, the Alliance for Public Transportation, and the Central Texas chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism.
• Frank Fernández, currently executive director of Green Doors, an affordable-housing nonprofit, and also a member of CAMPO’s advisory Transit Working Group. He worked as an analyst for Salomon Smith Barney in the 1990s and is on the board of the Alliance for Public Transportation.
• Rick Burciaga, a former banking executive and current trustee at Huston-Tillotson University.
• Richard N. Maier, a vice president at home builder DR Horton and current board member of both Envision Central Texas and the Real Estate Council of Austin.
As said, the Travis County representative will not be Gómez, and in fact, it won’t even be a commissioner – recently, the court (with Gómez dissenting) decided that seat should instead go to a citizen appointee. Applications are still being accepted, and an appointment is expected by Dec. 22.
The current Williamson County appointee is Leander Mayor John Cowman, but in some odd political maneuvering, he convinced his mayoral colleagues to appoint him to the small-cities position vacated by Jatzlau, even though his appointment did not expire until August 2010. The Williamson County Commissioners Court is expected to start interviewing replacement applicants soon.
And one more potential shake-up: The two city of Austin appointments are at present held by City Council members Mike Martinez and Chris Riley and do not expire until July 24, 2010. Martinez has expressed a desire to keep his spot; Riley also wants to stay on the board, but an aide said Wednesday that he may seek a switch to the CAMPO elected official slot, which would open the door for another council member on the board.
Applications and résumés of the CAMPO candidates can be downloaded at www.campotexas.org/comm_nc.php.
This article appears in swine flu.