Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Chairman Charles Snelling finally admitted that he deliberately misled the public when he stated it was “beyond dispute” that Dulles Rail was “on time and on budget.” Turns out it is neither — a fact Snelling and his fellow MWAA Board members knew all along, stripping the last pretenses of transparency and accountability from one of the largest infrastructure projects in the nation. Snelling later acknowledged that construction managers warned MWAA that the opening of Phase I would be delayed six months and that unexpected expenses were depleting the project’s contingency fund. Snelling claims he denied there was a problem because he believed the contractor would be able to make up the lost time — and the public would presumably be none the wiser. Since when do public officials get to lie if they think the news might be better later on?
Snelling’s dissembling is particularly troublesome because Fairfax County taxpayers are responsible for all Phase I cost overruns, which are now approximately $240 million to cover the six-month delay. Taxpayers can mainly thank former Fairfax County Board Chairman Gerry Connolly, who is now a Democratic member of Congress, and current board Chairwoman Sharon Bulova. Snelling’s less-than-candid assurances were an attempt to deprive taxpayers of a true accounting of this runaway project before November’s county and state elections.
But what do you expect when you sever the critical tie between voters and officials with the authority to spend public funds? Unaccountable political hacks like MWAA board members, who cannot be removed — even by the governor of Virginia — have no incentive to spend the people’s tax dollars wisely — or even to tell them the truth, for that matter.
That wasn’t Snelling’s only gaffe. Scoffing at a bill sponsored by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., that would give Virginia a majority on the MWAA Board for the first time, Snelling retorted that the two airports it manages “are no more Virginia’s than the Pentagon.” But in a Sept. 28 letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals regarding a legal challenge to Dulles Rail, attorney Robert Cynkar delivered a stinging rebuke, pointing out that “MWAA cannot credibly claim it is not a federal instrumentality before this court, while proclaiming to the rest of the world that is it responsible for operating federal facilities equivalent … to the Pentagon.” At the very least, Snelling’s shocking admission that he has been withholding critical information on this $7 billion mega-project should trigger a long overdue congressional investigation.
