Transparent decisions

The U.S. Department of Transportation will begin an audit of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority on Monday after requests made by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Tom Latham (R-Iowa) earlier this year. According to DOT Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III, the audit will determine whether the MWAA is operating within the law and whether its board of directors has been transparent and accountable with their decisions.

"I think that it's positive that they're doing this because the authority's policies and practices haven't been looked at for 25 years," Wolf told The Loudoun Times.

Wolf, who had a role in the creation of the MWAA in 1986, sent a letter to the U.S. General Accountability Office on February 20 asking for a comprehensive audit of operations. In his letter, the congressman cited a Washington Post editorial from the same day about the authority's "dysfunctional" search for a new chief executive. The Post mentioned problems such as: racial tensions among the board members during the search for a new chief executive and the voting power wielded by a board member who was under house arrest in the Ivory Coast.

Wolf, along with several local county supervisors and state and federal officials, criticized the MWAA board of directors for a recent decision to build an underground Metro station for Dulles Airport as part of the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project. The MWAA rejected plans to build an above-ground station, an idea supported by Loudoun and Fairfax County officials; and instead adopted plans to build the underground station which will cost an extra $300 million.

In an April 6 statement, Wolf said that the MWAA plan for an underground station was a bad idea, reminding the Authority that "everything possible needs to be done to keep costs down on this project." Three weeks later Gov. Bob McDonnell asked the board to reconsider its vote, noting that the above-ground station was a "more fiscally sound decision."

The MWAA defended its decision in an April 15 Washington Post opinion piece where Mame Reiley, a member of the MWAA board, wrote that the underground station would spare travelers the burden of walking 1,150 feet through bad weather. She added that underground stations enjoy a service life twice as long as above-ground stations.

Phase 1 of the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project is an 11.5 mile extension from East Falls Church to Wiehle Avenue in Reston. Since the 2004 estimate of $1.5 billion, the cost for Phase 1 has skyrocketed to $3.1 billion. The cost for Phase 2 of the project, an 11.6 mile extension from Wiehle Avenue to Dulles Airport and on to Route 772 in Loudoun County, has grown by almost $1 billion over the past year to $3.5 billion.

The federal government has committed $900 million for Phase 1 of the project, but the remaining cost has state and local officials balking. Supervisors from Loudoun and Fairfax County have begun discussions about the possibility of backing out of the project. Fairfax County is expected to pay 16.1 percent of the project's total cost and Loudoun County is expected to pay 4.8 percent of the total cost, according to The Washington Post.

In December 2010, Wolf called for the establishment of an independent auditing group that could monitor the project as a way to protect the public's investment. He said that the group would "identify and prevent waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement" and alleviate concerns by citizens with a financial stake in the project. Wolf referred to other transportation projects around the country that became overrun with costs, such as the proposed tunnel between New Jersey and New York City and Boston's "Big Dig" project. The independent auditing group was never created.

Along with concerns over rising costs, Virginia officials were angered by the MWAA board of directors' decision to require Dulles Rail contractors to work under a union-friendly labor agreement. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott York told The Washington Examiner that the agreement would limit the number of contractor bids and drive the cost of labor up.

"It will prevent a significant number of Virginia's construction workforce, of which 96 percent is non-union, from working on this project," said Tony Howard, President of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce, according to The Loudoun Times. "Since this project is being overwhelmingly funded by Virginia's taxpayers and businesses that would be an outrage."

In May, Wolf proposed legislation that would give the governors of Virginia and Maryland and the mayor of the District of Columbia the power to remove MWAA board members. In his introduction of the bill, Wolf stated that the current board of directors has "lost sight of its primary mission of serving airport passengers and residents of the surrounding communities." He cited the "disastrous" underground station plans and the probable hike in tolls that commuters will face.

Many Virginia officials have been unhappy with the MWAA since it was given monopoly control over the Metrorail project in 2006.

The MWAA plans to cooperate fully with the audit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Share your thoughts and follow us on Facebook and Twitter today!