Transportation house-cleaning, overhaul overdue

A SCATHING AUDIT of the state Transportation Department should put to rest once and for all any doubts that we need to overhaul what may well be the most arrogant and unaccountable agency in all of state government.

The audit — which documented tens of millions of dollars wasted, hundreds of millions mismanaged, high-level favoritism, attempts to deceive the Legislature and the public and violations of state and federal law — changes the question from whether the Legislature will demand change to whether it will demand actual reform or merely be content with cosmetic changes.

It seems clear that executive director Elizabeth Mabry needs to go. Even if she was not personally involved in any of the illegal or wasteful activities, she was in charge, and problems of this scope demand the removal of those in charge. People who oversee such a mess are rarely up to the job of cleaning it up, and Ms. Mabry has demonstrated that she’s no exception: She’s been working overtime for weeks now to downplay, contradict and divert public attention away from the substantial problems documented by the respected Legislative Audit Council.

But a new director is merely a first step. Ms. Mabry has done precisely what the part-time board that ostensibly controls the agency has allowed, perhaps even encouraged, her to do. All the members of that board who have acquiesced as the agency took the taxpayers for a ride — and that’s at least four of the seven, perhaps more — need to resign or be removed.

Of course, the board members can’t be removed unless the Legislature passes a law to change the way the agency is governed, which it should do, quickly.

It’s no accident that we keep having scandals and scandalous waste and mismanagement at the Transportation Department. That is practically inevitable when you create an agency that is not even indirectly accountable to any elected official.

The Transportation Department is the poster child for government that answers to no one: The director is hired by a part-time board with a chairman appointed by the governor — who can vote only in case of a tie — and six board members, each appointed from a congressional district by the legislators who happen to live in that congressional district. There is no provision for removing those board members before their terms expire unless they break the law or are proved to be incapable of attending meetings.

Some legislators have floated the idea of letting the governor appoint all seven board members. That would be an improvement — provided governors also have a free hand to remove board members as they see fit — but it should be considered the absolute minimum.

If you want your gas tax dollars spent on the actual, substantial needs of our state rather than squandered on well-connected cronies who overcharge us to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, because they know they can get away with it, then you want this agency to be run by someone who knows to a moral certainty that she’s history if she doesn’t get the job done.

As long as all she has to do is use her considerable (taxpayer-provided) resources to keep four board members happy, that’s not a certainty; it’s not even likely. That certainty is created only when the governor has a free hand to hire and fire the director as he sees fit. Our governor needs that power, which 41 governors take for granted, now more than ever.