Tag Archives: governance

Transportation Secretary – Disappointing Choice?

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LaHood is a conservative Illinois Republican with little transportation expertise and almost no administrative experience, who has earned a LCV lifetime voting score on critical environmental issues of 27 percent, and who maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he’s now supposed to regulate.

Everything is not perfect, right? Alex Steffen at WorldChanging comments on the disappointing choice of Transportation Secretary after other notable selections. As Alex writes, transportation is not a department you want to skimp out on especially in wake of crumbling infrastructure and Obama’s promise of rebuilding America.

White House Urban Policy Office Chief

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The Obama transition team announced the chair of the newly-created office of Urban Policy. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion will head the new White House office of Urban Policy:

Carrion is a well-liked, pro-development official who has tried to enhance his limited power through an alliance with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and gives the New York mayor — whose aide was just appointed HUD Secretary — another ally in the White House, and suggests a New York-centric urban policy.

After eight years of hands-off policy from the Feds, it remains to be seen how a progressive administration fares toward urban policy.

Carrion was an important figure in the development of the Bronx Terminal Market & Hunts Point Vision projects and was responsible for bringing George Steinbrenner of the Yankees and the City to the table for negotiations in the development of the new Yankee stadium. On urban transportation, he was a vocal supporter of New York’s congestion pricing plan.