D.C. Inspector General Says Metro Board Chairman Violated Conflict of Interest Rules

The District’s inspector general has filed an ethics complaint against the chairman of Metro’s governing board, alleging that he violated conflict-of-interest rules in serving as a paid adviser to a company that has done tens of millions of dollars in contract work for the transit agency, according to a member of the board’s ethics committee.

 

Mortimer L. Downey, who joined the Metro board as a representative of the federal government in 2010 and became chairman this year, has made no secret of his lucrative ties to the engineering company Parsons Brinckerhoff, which has been paid $81 million in recent years to manage Metro’s capital improvements program.

The company, which also had a major role in designing and building the troubled Silver Spring Transit Center, has been sued by Metro and Montgomery County over alleged problems with the three-story transit hub. The center opened last week after five years of delays and $50 million in cost overruns..

Although Downey has said that his approximately $100,000-a-year job as a part-time “senior adviser” to Parsons Brinckerhoff was approved by Metro’s general counsel — and that he ended his 10-year relationship with the company three months ago — the Metro board’s ethics committee has received a conflict-of-interest complaint from the D.C. Office of the Inspector General, according to committee member Michael Goldman..