A Government Watchdog Who Led the Pack
Mead, Noted for Constructive Criticism, Built a Following in Transportation

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 16, 2006

Kenneth M. Mead has spent his career as a government watchdog, telling lawmakers and bureaucrats what they don't want to hear.

He is, in the words of one man who has written a book on inspectors general, among the top 10 in a profession that is little known outside the Beltway but someone to whom taxpayers, airline passengers and Amtrak riders owe a debt of gratitude.

Last week, Mead, 56, stepped down as the Transportation Department's inspector general after nine years, the longest tenure for that position. Over that time, he pointed out management problems with Boston's infamous $14.6 billion Big Dig highway project, sent covert teams to test the nation's airport security system, and dispatched auditors to cities around the world to keep tabs on where U.S. airlines are farming out maintenance.

Mead will begin his new career today, helping build the transportation law practice in the Washington office of Baker Botts LLP.

Co-workers said Mead draws his energy from a love for transportation policy. He devoured every line -- including footnotes -- of the 1,056 reports prepared by his staff during his tenure and commonly asked for drafts while on vacation. Aides said they were amused by Mead's yearly enthusiasm to be one of the first to grab the conference committee report on transportation appropriations, hot off the press, so he could take it home after work.

"I could not have been the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, or, say, the Interior," Mead said with a hint of mock disdain. "Transportation affects everyone, every day. To be part of the solution is what turns me on."

Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University, called Mead "the dean of his generation of inspectors general," known as IGs, who must navigate serving the public interest around the politics of Congress and the White House.

Too often, Light said, inspectors general are out for publicity or are political appointees who focus on small fraud cases without tackling bigger problems. Light is the author of "Monitoring Government: Inspectors General and the Search for Accountability."

Light said Mead was known as a straight shooter, concerned about the larger problems. "His first principle was to fix the problem, don't just identify it," Light said.

Mead has been criticized by airline lobbyists, who felt he sometimes overemphasized safety risks, although labor unions praised him. Mead's office issued several reports criticizing the Federal Aviation Administration's oversight of rapidly growing third-party maintenance facilities across the country and overseas, as U.S. carriers send more and more aircraft to be repaired at a fraction of the cost they would pay their own employees.

Transportation officials often grumbled that Mead's office received more money -- leaping from $44 million in 1999 to $69 million in the current fiscal year -- while their budgets were trimmed. The officials did not want to be named because they said they respect and like Mead, but they suggested that the money allowed his investigators to conduct audits that exceeded the original scope.

But for a job that requires delivering mostly bad news, Mead had few critics because of the way he reached out to them and tried to solve problems.

"I am going to miss him," said Sarah McLeod, a lobbyist for the airlines' contract maintenance companies, whose industry was the subject of several Mead reports. "He appreciated good dialogue. If you disagreed with him, it was okay. It wasn't personal," she said.

Mead won high praise from Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta for mobilizing the IG's office after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to focus on assessing the nation's airport security system and make recommendations to quickly improve it.

Mead's office on the ninth floor of the Transportation Department building in Southwest provides an expansive view of the Potomac River and Reagan National Airport. Even today, Mead said, it reminds him of the scene that unfolded on the morning of the attacks, when the smoke from the Pentagon began to block his view on one side and airplanes, complying with the government's order to land immediately, zoomed in one after another at the airport.

His biggest regret, Mead said, was not pushing enough on air security before the attacks. Mead's office had issued reports outlining egregious breaches at various airports, but little was done. Before the attacks, one of his investigators was able to pass undetected through security carrying a briefcase that contained a knife, a fake pack of dynamite and a clock, set up to resemble a bomb. The investigator also was able to walk through an "employees only" door out to the tarmac and onto a plane.

"The way 9/11 was pulled off, it was not something the security system in place was designed to prevent," Mead said. "But even things it was designed to prevent, it wasn't doing a good job."

After Sept. 11, Mead exchanged heated letters with the head of the airline lobby when the industry balked at paying what Mead considered to be its share for security. But that only won him admirers among consumer and taxpayer advocates.

Some of Mead's biggest fans were members of Congress, who relied on him not only for his direct approach but also for advice, said Ross Capon, head of the National Association of Railroad Passengers.

"They're basically saying 'Help us! We don't know what to do'" when it came to Amtrak, Capon said. "These are congressmen who feel stumped by the issue and they wanted Ken to solve the problems for them. They wanted him to tell them what to do ... which is a much bigger role" than inspector general," he said. "Ken never backed down from that broader role."