Above is the title of my latest op-ed, which appears in today’s Virginian-Pilot. (When posted online, it will be available here.) As you might expect, the topic is, once again, transparency, and the lack thereof as it relates to the mess at HRT.
The issue of transparency is one that is not going away any time soon. It is a problem of the culture of government, probably best described by a friend of mine as “a seat at the cool kids’ table.” Those whose job it is to watch out for the uses and abuses of taxpayer money tend to think that, because they have a seat at the table, they know more about what is going on, and, therefore, can make decisions outside of the public eye. What they fail to grasp is that each one of those people at the table has a reason for not being fully open about what they know – after all, knowledge is power – and so the information that is shared is incomplete.
The bombshells that have emerged from the HRT review could only have happened within a culture of secrecy. As citizens, our responsibility is to demand that our representatives share with us not just that information that they think important, but all of the information so that we can decide for ourselves what is important. And should those representatives not be forthcoming, should they continue the culture of secrecy, the only avenue we have is to replace them with those who embrace transparency.
In other words, we all deserve a seat at the cool kids’ table.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Not knowing the backstory of HRT…if you disband it, what happens?
I think the short answer is that each locality would have to have its own public transit “authority”. Not good for the region
HRT was created from a combination of PenTran (Peninsula Transit) and TRT (Tidewater Transit). If it were somehow disbanded, some other entity would have to be created it its place. I doubt if HRT would ever be disbanded.
Given the difficulty of creating effective regional authorities in Virginia (that Dillon Rule thing again), HRT will have to stick around. Still, the lack of effective oversight over both HRT and SPSA, the other main regional operation, is truly dispiriting.
Legally, HRT is a corporation held one-seventh by each member city. If dissolved, each city would get it’s share of the assets.
Under Federal law, we are required to provide mass transit in order to receive Federal highway dollars. Given such, something would need to come in it’s wake, either a new seven city agency, seven agencies, or some cities banding together to form seperate multicity agencies.
During last Winter’s HRT saga (note how this happens every December), I started playing with scenarios under which the agency could be disbanded underneath Michael Townes. Therefore, your question isn’t such a stretch.
You would think it should be disbanded and the letters HRT never to be seen again. Certainly a political move, but even Mayor Sessoms has concluded that a light rail partnership involving VB and HRT can no longer be considered now. He left the future open, but IMO, any future partnership should be made with another entity along the lines Henry mentioned, local. Authority or, a reformed entity of a combination of the seven.
Maybe the end result could be called MTHR of HRMT. Longer and more complicated adding the word “mass”, but symbolically, the cities involved need to show they in no fashion find what happenend to be acceptable. HRT is such an abomination that it needs to be utterly scrapped.
Here’s the problem, Vivian.
Many of the insiders leading the light rail charge don’t see these discoveries as anything more than a PR problem.
If they weren’t discovered, these deeds would’ve been just fine with them.
Now, they are quick to brush them under the rug and charge on, distancing the project from the people in HRT who messed it up. Heck, they call it “Light Rail Now”
They aren’t calling it “Fiscally Sound Now”
Yes, Brian, and that’s why they have PR guys like you to deal with such messes.
In the words of Mayor Teddy Burnside on the TV series “Carter Country”, “Handle it! Handle it!”