Saturday, February 10, 2018 7:00:58 PM
Top official departs ‘rudderless’ railroad safety agency
The resignation of the former acting chief of the Federal Railroad Administration comes while
Democrats are blocking a vote on a permanent leader — and as train-related deaths climb.
By LAUREN GARDNER
02/10/2018 01:09 PM EST
Updated 02/10/2018 04:30 PM EST
Emergency personnel work at the scene of a crash in Virginia involving a garbage truck and a train carrying GOP lawmakers to their annual retreat on Jan. 31.
Including the Virginia accident, Amtrak has experienced four fatal crashes since December, but agency in charge overseeing the safety of the nation's railroads
continues to lack a permanent leader. | Zack Wajsgrasu/The Daily Progress via AP
By Matthew Cooper
A top official charged with overseeing the safety of the nation's railroads has resigned "effective immediately," the Department of Transportation said Saturday after POLITICO raised questions about whether he was simultaneously working as a public relations consultant in Mississippi.
The news comes at a time of strain for the Federal Railroad Administration, which hasn’t had a permanent leader for more than a year while it investigates a string of fatal train crashes and deals with a rising trend of rail-related deaths.
Heath Hall became the Federal Railroad Administration's acting chief after being appointed deputy administrator in June. But he subsequently appeared at least twice in local media reports last summer as a sheriff's department spokesman in Madison County, Miss., where he has long run a public relations and political consulting firm.
The firm also continued to receive payments from the county for its services from July through December, despite Hall's pledge in a federal ethics form that the business would be "dormant" while he worked at DOT. And Tiffany Lindemann, a former FRA public affairs official who left the agency in September, told POLITICO this week that she had fielded at least three requests from a Mississippi television journalist seeking to speak with Hall during the summer.
This was during a period when Hall was in charge of an agency with a $1.7 billion budget, overseeing the safety of 760 railroads, a multibillion-dollar freight rail industry and the safety of millions of passengers.
More: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/10/railroad-safety-agency-chief-resigns-heath-hall-402093
Seems giving his absolute all to his public duty was not the highest priority for Heath, and that a $1.7
billion budget wasn't enough to keep him busy. As for the ethical pledge. Well, our boss is a model.
The resignation of the former acting chief of the Federal Railroad Administration comes while
Democrats are blocking a vote on a permanent leader — and as train-related deaths climb.
By LAUREN GARDNER
02/10/2018 01:09 PM EST
Updated 02/10/2018 04:30 PM EST
Emergency personnel work at the scene of a crash in Virginia involving a garbage truck and a train carrying GOP lawmakers to their annual retreat on Jan. 31.
Including the Virginia accident, Amtrak has experienced four fatal crashes since December, but agency in charge overseeing the safety of the nation's railroads
continues to lack a permanent leader. | Zack Wajsgrasu/The Daily Progress via AP
By Matthew Cooper
A top official charged with overseeing the safety of the nation's railroads has resigned "effective immediately," the Department of Transportation said Saturday after POLITICO raised questions about whether he was simultaneously working as a public relations consultant in Mississippi.
The news comes at a time of strain for the Federal Railroad Administration, which hasn’t had a permanent leader for more than a year while it investigates a string of fatal train crashes and deals with a rising trend of rail-related deaths.
Heath Hall became the Federal Railroad Administration's acting chief after being appointed deputy administrator in June. But he subsequently appeared at least twice in local media reports last summer as a sheriff's department spokesman in Madison County, Miss., where he has long run a public relations and political consulting firm.
The firm also continued to receive payments from the county for its services from July through December, despite Hall's pledge in a federal ethics form that the business would be "dormant" while he worked at DOT. And Tiffany Lindemann, a former FRA public affairs official who left the agency in September, told POLITICO this week that she had fielded at least three requests from a Mississippi television journalist seeking to speak with Hall during the summer.
This was during a period when Hall was in charge of an agency with a $1.7 billion budget, overseeing the safety of 760 railroads, a multibillion-dollar freight rail industry and the safety of millions of passengers.
More: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/10/railroad-safety-agency-chief-resigns-heath-hall-402093
Seems giving his absolute all to his public duty was not the highest priority for Heath, and that a $1.7
billion budget wasn't enough to keep him busy. As for the ethical pledge. Well, our boss is a model.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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