Transportation secretary discusses agenda

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Transportation secretary discusses agenda

Saturday, Mar. 20, 2010 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 32 comments | Email this story

Virginia’s new secretary of transportation, Sean Connaughton, would be forgiven if he began and ended every speech with a borrowed line from a popular Robert Frost poem: “I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep.”

There are many such transportation-related promises to keep, as well as tens of thousands of miles of rails and roads to tend to, under Connaughton’s watch as the caretaker of Virginia’s transport infrastructure. In addition to rails and roads, Virginia’s state airports, bus transit and critical ports fall under the transportation secretary’s watch. And, Connaughton added in a little-known fact, so do auto dealers and towing companies here.

In remarks before the Committee for Dulles on March 18, Connaughton outlined his early vision for transportation funding and reform.

First on his agenda is a wholesale reform of the VDOT organization. “The current structure doesn’t work well,” he said. To illustrate the need for reform, Connaughton said he took out a department chart from 2010 and overlayed it with a similar VDOT chart from the 1930s. Almost exactly the same – except for one difference: the 1930s chart had a box labeled “Chauffeur.”

“We have not changed the ways in which we make decisions,” he said, and added that a performance audit was also under way. “We’ll be announcing a reorganization of VDOT very soon.”

A second priority includes a hefty package of legislative reforms to enhance “effectiveness and efficiency” for consideration by the General Assembly. “Statutory changes are very needed” to get many meaningful reform done, he said. “Our laws are archaic – again, it’s a 1930s structure.”

The third, and final, transportation priority, according to Connaughton, will be funding. “We’re looking to develop a laundry list of ideas” to submit to the legislature, he said. In previous such special sessions in the past decade, consensus and progress crumbled in a political meltdown over raising taxes to pay for increased transportation budgets.

Taken together, the agenda would allow the administration “to bring transportation programs into the 21st century,” Connaughton declared. “It’s a year of a lot of work for us.”

Perhaps the understatement of the new decade. But although the task is challenging, it may be a role tailor-made for Connaughton. As chairman of Prince William County’s Board of Supervisors from 2000 to 2006, he made transportation a centerpiece of his administration. In a more pedestrian context, his 25 years as a daily commuter in Northern Virginia gave him a hands-on, bird’s-eye view of the lapses of the transportation system and the aggravation of worsening traffic conditions.

Connaughton was nominated to his current position by Gov. Bob McDonnell in December 2009. Already, given the state’s dire fiscal standing and dried-up revenues, he has had to make harsh choices – laying off 700 VDOT workers and trimming hundreds of millions of dollars from an already strained transportation budget.

But his first test had nothing to do with unhappy commuters, dubious legislators or number-crunching. It was Mother Nature – in the form of 65 inches of snow dumped on most of the state in January and February.

Instead of expending part or all of a $80 million snow removal budget for the year, the state tallied up a massive $205 million tab, which will be refunded in part (75 percent) by the federal government.

Besides having the roads cleared, Connaughton has plugged more than 55,000 snow-induced potholes across the state, thanks to VDOT’s “Pothole Killer” monster machine. The Pothole Killer is still on the prowl, a month later.

Transportation likely will be discussed in a special session of the General Assembly later this year.

For more on Connaughton, see the Times-Mirror Q&A interview at LoudounTimes.com.

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Fri, Nov 19 at 10:33 AM by Gendra | Benidorm Accommodation