How will STA’s new top driver be chosen? Without your input.

Susan Meyer has been “ driving the bus ” for the Spokane Transit Authority (STA) for nearly 20 years as CEO, but in June she announced her retirement and plans for a slow transition out of the agency over the next six months.

Now the question on the minds of local transit advocates is: When Meyer’s foot is finally off the pedal, how will a new driver be chosen?

“We have an opportunity to select a new CEO,” Meyer said in an STA executive committee meeting last week. “And by we, I mean the board of directors.”

The STA Board Operations Committee is a five-member (but four-voting-member ) executive committee that decides which initiatives come before the full board for a vote. Last week’s meeting revealed some insight into how Meyer’s replacement would be selected.

Spoiler: It’s going to be without any official public or employee input.

The proposed search process for a new CEO, as recommended by Meyer, would be led by the four voting members of the Board Operations Committee, which would function as a search task force. Those four people — County Commissioner and STA Board Chair Al French, Spokane Valley Mayor Pam Haley, Liberty Lake City Council Member Dan Dunne and Spokane City Council Member Zack Zappone — would work with a recruiting firm to approve a job description, conduct introductory interviews and narrow the search to the top two or three candidates.

Those top candidates would then be interviewed by the full STA board, which would choose a candidate to install by January 1, 2025.

The role of a PTBA

The Spokane Transit Authority is a Public Transportation Benefit Area (PTBA). As a special taxing district established by the state, the PTBA operates like a fire or school district — except it provides public transportation to 471,179 people in Spokane, Spokane Valley, Airway Heights, Cheney, Medical Lake, Liberty Lake, Millwood and surrounding unincorporated areas, as of 2022. It is funded by a voter-approved local sales tax of 0.8% levied within the PTBA boundaries, and decisions are made by the STA board, which is composed of elected officials from the communities within the PTBA and a transit workers’ union representative, who does not get a vote.

The STA website states that the organization “is considered a municipal government much like any city, county, fire district or school district,” but there have been philosophical disagreements between board members over whether STA should operate more like a business — with profit at the center of decision-making — or like a municipal government, with the public good as the guiding principle. Recently, those disagreements centered on how many free fare opportunities STA should offer, specifically during the 50th anniversary of Expo ’74 , which took place in May and June.

Whether the next CEO should function more like a profit-minded business owner or a public servant is shaping up to be the next big fight for the STA. The full board is due to make a decision on how the search process should be organized at its meeting this Thursday at 1:30 pm in the STA Boardroom (1230 W Boone Avenue), which could be the lone opportunity for the public to offer any input on the process.

Process problems

Zappone has a problem with that. As the city of Spokane’s lone representative on the committee, he is frequently an underdog during STA proceedings and the target of his fellow board members’ ire . He takes exception with the lack of opportunities for public and employee involvement in choosing the transportation authority’s next leader.

“I think it’s really important to have the employees’ perspective throughout the whole process,” Zappone said in the meeting. “I think they provide invaluable insight that I, as a board member, don’t have, and I think that they’ll ask different types of questions.”

He pointed to the city of Spokane’s recent hiring process for a new police chief. Like the proposed STA CEO process, it began with hiring a firm to conduct a nationwide search. Unlike STA’s plan, the city brought in other interested parties —  including the Police Guild — as part of the conversation, and hosted a public forum for community members to ask questions of the top candidates and share their opinions.

French was quick to shut down Zappone at the meeting, stating, “If you’re hiring a CEO for a business, I’m not aware of when you go back to the employees and say, ‘Do you agree or not agree?’ That’s a very uncomfortable situation.”

Haley — one of French’s longtime allies on the board — jumped in to agree, arguing that it would be “awkward” to include employees in the process, “because what if they voted against the new CEO?”

She also said that Zappone’s comparison to the city’s search for a police chief wasn’t relevant, because, “There’s no correlation between a police chief and a CEO. There’s a correlation between a CEO and a CEO, [and] you don’t do that process when you hire your CEO.”

Dunne and County Commissioner Josh Kerns, who serves on the committee as a non-voting member, were in favor of unofficial employee involvement — something like an employee luncheon with top candidates and anonymous feedback notecard afterward, but had no interest in more official participation.

Zappone also suggested that, like in the city’s police chief search, the public have a voice somewhere in the process, “whether that’s a public forum, [or] an advisory committee council.”

“We need … to have some sort of way for the public to weigh in because this is a very public agency,” Zappone said.

STA already has a mechanism in place for gathering public input — the Citizens Advisory Council (CAC) — and Zappone suggested the chair of the CAC join the hiring task force in an advisory capacity.

Other committee members also disliked that suggestion. Meanwhile, Meyer pointed out the risk in having top candidates’ names announced, as they may still hold other jobs they might not want to lose, and said that such a high level of public involvement and transparency was unusual. Some of the elected officials thought it might just be too much to ask of candidates.

“I have to be honest with you, if I had to interview with [the] community, with community partners, with nonprofits, with union members, with the team and have a social hour with anybody who wanted to come in, I’m not applying,” Haley said. “What job do you interview for or apply for that requires communities that have no jurisdiction over you at all to like you well enough to work with you?”

“I’m not applying either,” French said. “We’re going to have a tough enough job as it is, attracting somebody to this agency with a split board. If I’m a CEO and I’m coming into an organization and I’ve got a 5-4 board, I’m going to go, ‘I’m out.’”

“The hiring process is a board decision. It’s not board and union. It’s not board and community. It’s the board’s decision,” he added.

Zappone disagreed that STA’s hiring process should be run like hiring a CEO for a business, as Haley suggested, or without community input, like French wants.

“Public transit is a public service,” he told RANGE. “A business would be funded entirely by users. Public transit is funded primarily by taxes, and that’s why a CEO search should be a public process — because it serves the public.”

The interested public

Erik Lowe and Sarah Rose — members of Spokane Reimagined, a group dedicated to making the region’s streets safer and encouraging alternative methods of transit to cars — have noticed the STA board’s apparent lack of interest in hearing from members of the public it’s supposed to serve.

“I was really excited when I saw how much community feedback was sought out when the city was searching for a new police chief. I genuinely thought the search for a new STA CEO would have a similar level of citizen involvement, at least early on in the process,” Rose told RANGE. “With the recent scandals coming to light of certain STA board members and (soon-to-be former) CEO conspiring to stall programs which would benefit the public — as well as ensuring qualified citizens don’t get an equal chance to hold citizen seats or other STA positions — it makes me incredibly wary to think the public isn’t included in the new search.”

Some of those scandals include the revealed content of texts sent by Meyer, French and Haley about their fellow board members, STA asking security guards to follow Lowe at meetings he attended and a disregard for process with Lowe’s application to sit on the CAC board, which he discovered via public records request and discussed in our recent podcast episode .

Rose added that she was concerned that some members of the STA board will use the CEO search to cement power.

“I worry the unchecked power these board members have will be further exacerbated if a CEO is appointed without any community input,” she said.

Lowe sent us a prepared statement he plans to share with the STA board on Thursday, expressing his displeasure with the lack of public involvement in the hiring process.

“Susan Meyer has held the position of CEO since 2005. I believe it is the goal of everyone in this room for the next CEO to have a similarly long tenure,” Lowe wrote. “It is woefully insufficient to have a selection committee comprised of just four board members, with no public oversight, responsible for the hiring of such a regionally important position.”

He would like to see the task force in charge of selecting the CEO include a labor representative, a CAC member and someone from the public at large, and for the selection process to include a public forum.

In a press release sent out by Spokane Reimagined — and signed onto by the Tenants Union of Washington, the Spokane Human Rights Commission and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local #1015 — on July 24, Chad Camandona, president of the union representing the transit workers in Spokane, Pullman, and Moses Lake Washington, stated that workers should have a voice in the hiring process.

“I feel it is in the best interest for all parties who contribute in sustaining STA as an entity, to have a say in the hiring process of a new CEO,” he wrote. “This process would ensure we find the right person to Move STA forward into the future.”

Terri Anderson, from the Tenants Union of Washington, also stressed the need for community representation in the process.

“Black, Indigenous, People of Color, as well as people with disabilities, senior citizens and renters are all more likely to be transit riders and have the lived experience of riding Spokane buses that will enhance the selection process for the CEO of STA,” she wrote. “Vulnerable citizens in Spokane are too often left out of the decisions that have the greatest impact on their lives. It is time for that to change so that those who are impacted have their voices heard and a good start is to have representation on the selection committee for the new CEO of STA.”

The press release concluded by inviting community members to provide comment and feedback on the hiring process at tomorrow’s meeting, which can be signed up for here . All requests to speak must be submitted by 9 am tomorrow.

Public support for the new CEO will be crucial, as the STA needs to hold a levy in the next few years for 0.2% of the total 0.8% sales tax. This 0.2% portion of the tax is attached to the STA Moving Forward plan, which was passed by voters in 2016 and expires in 2028. If this portion is not renewed, the overall tax levied by the STA would drop to 0.6%. The levy would require a majority of voters in the PTBA to approve. Zappone pointed that out in the recent committee meeting, saying that getting the public on board with the new CEO could help them hit the ground running and give them “the most advantageous start.”

Rose, who plans to attend the meeting on Thursday, stated her position on the matter clearly: “The people of Spokane deserve better; they deserve to be involved in the search for a new STA CEO.”

The post How will STA’s new top driver be chosen? Without your input. appeared first on RANGE Media .