I received an email from Bob McDonnell’s office a few minutes ago with his “appointments to three Virginia boards and commissions.” One that immediately jumped out at me was the following:
Caren Merrick of McLean, Partner with Bibury Partners to the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority
All I can say is, if you thought MWAA was bad now (which it is!), wait until this unqualified right winger gets on there. Things won’t get any better, that’s for sure.
UPDATE: A Democratic friend of mine adds the following comments, which I think are both highly relevant and spot-on.
This is part of a long-developing pattern in which the dysfunction of the MWAA Board, and their poor decisions, not only has brought us those bad decisions themselves, but also has brought us an erosion of NOVA and Democratic control over MWAA. The McDonnell appointees are going to start “taking it” to the do-nothing mis-managers on the MWAA Board.
In addition, one of the biggest messaging failures of the MWAA board was their failure to agree upon, and relentlessly promote month in and month out, year in and year out, the need for a dedicated revenue stream for Metro. Episodically and periodically, they did this, but they were never willing to stick with it and explain in easily understandable terms exactly what was going to happen to the system if it didn’t get this dedicated revenue stream: inability to replace capital assets as they wore out, etc.
UPDATE: My Dem friend adds, ” The messaging problem as to this second point is primarily the fault of WMATA (not MWAA). However, the governance of both MWAA and WMATA has been dysfunctional; both have made poor decisions, and the poor decisions of MWAA have really come into focus with respect to its decisions about the Metro Silver line construction project.”
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