OUT OF A JOB:
Move is part of broader restructuring of agency by Hogan administration
For the second time under a Republican governor, Robert L. Smith is out of the top job at the Maryland Transit Administration.
For the second time under a Republican governor, Robert L. Smith is out of the top job at the Maryland Transit Administration.
Smith’s last day at the agency was Friday, he and a Maryland Department of Transportation spokeswoman confirmed.
“It’s deja vu, but I’m going to wish the new administration well,” Smith said. “The MTA has a lot of great opportunities, a lot of great things going on. I think transit has a great future in Maryland.”
Erin Henson, the MDOT spokeswoman, said Smith’s departure was “a personnel issue” that she could not discuss.
It comes as part of a broader restructuring of the MTA under Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, whose transportation appointees began increasing their oversight of the MTA even before Smith was pushed out.
The MTA has faced increasing criticism since Hogan took office earlier this year. The agency is a year late in producing a promised plan for improvements to its beleaguered Baltimore bus network, is facing a class-action lawsuit from transit riders with disabilities who use its Mobility service, and hasn’t met a state mandate that it provide 35 percent of its operating budget through fare revenue since 2005.
Ridership across all MTA transit modes — including local buses, light rail and MARC train service — was down in 2014, though it has rebounded some this year.
A recent investigation by The Baltimore Sun uncovered political issues, including the run-up to the 2014 elections, that played a clear role in the delay of the agency’s so-called Bus Network Improvement Project. It also showed skepticism within the Hogan administration for some of the plans being proposed under Smith, including an up-to-18-year rollout schedule for the bus improvements.
Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn said his department would be reviewing the bus project.
Rahn has also been reviewing plans for the Red Line in Baltimore and the Purple Line in the Washington suburbs. Hogan questioned the cost of those projects during his campaign as possibly too expensive for the state.
Henson said Rahn was not available Tuesday to discuss the now-vacant position of MTA administrator.
Smith was appointed to the position for the second time by Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, in 2013. He was first appointed in 2002, late in the administration of Gov. Parris Glendening, also a Democrat, but was let go under the Republican administration of Gov. Robert Ehrlich in 2004. On Tuesday, Smith said that it “would have been rewarding” to remain at the MTA as big projects like the Red Line were brought to fruition, “but at this point that’s behind us.”
He declined to speculate on why Hogan and Rahn wanted him to leave, but said he is proud of his record at the agency.
Senior Deputy Administrator Ronald Barnes will assume the responsibilities of MTA chief until the agency appoints a replacement for Smith, Henson said.
Robert Flanagan, the transportation secretary under Ehrlich, declined to discuss that decision but said new administrations often decide to chart a new course at the MTA.
“Historically, managing MTA has been a challenge,” said Flanagan, now a state delegate representing parts of Howard County and a member of the House environment and transportation committee. “A new governor and a new secretary of transportation have to be accountable, but in order to be accountable they have to have somebody in that administrator’s job that they have confidence in and that they have trust in.”
The agency recently appointed Douglas DeLeaver — a former Ehrlich appointee and a member of Hogan’s transition team — its first ever “director of farebox recovery” as it works to address the agency’s decade of budget shortfalls.
DeLeaver, who will earn a salary of $107,429, has spent 40 years in the policing and transit fields and served stints as chief of the MTA Police and the Natural Resources Police. He said he has already been talking to transit officials in other states and hopes to introduce changes quickly such as more inspectors looking for “fare evaders” on light rail trains.
James F. Ports Jr., the transportation department’s new deputy secretary for operations, said the agency is considering a slew of other changes too, including increased MARC service for Ravens tailgates and big Orioles games.
“We’re trying to be more creative than we have been in the past,” Ports said. “We’ve been attacking this aggressively.”