Solid Reputation Aids Md.'s Porcari In Bid for U.S. Job

Timothy Maloney recalls the heavy sigh of an FBI agent who questioned him a couple years back during a background check of Maloney's longtime friend John D. Porcari.

"This is the most boring investigation I've ever conducted," the Prince George's County lawyer remembers the agent saying. "He's Boy Scout straight."

Porcari withstood the scrutiny and received federal security clearance for his second tour as Maryland's transportation secretary, a post that puts him in charge of the state's highways, mass transit systems, freight railroads, airports and port.

Today, Porcari will take his reputation as a straight shooter to a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which is considering his nomination as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. It is a reputation he maintained even as he oversaw some of the Washington region's most controversial projects.

Those efforts include planning the construction of the Intercounty Connector through woods and streams of central Montgomery County and planning the Purple Line transit link, which would run along a popular wooded trail and through one of the area's most affluent communities.

Friends and colleagues describe Porcari as a detail-oriented technocrat who has used a low-key style to mollify opponents and woo Republican lawmakers while serving two Democratic governors.

He appears to have few critics, although environmental groups say his otherwise green résumé is marred by the ICC, now being built between Gaithersburg and Laurel. Republican lawmakers fault him for doing the governor's bidding, but they credit him with returning their phone calls, no matter the disagreement.

"I was struck by how someone could have a job like that for so long and have everyone like him," said University of Maryland President C.D. Mote Jr., who hired Porcari as vice president for administrative affairs from 2003 to 2006, between Porcari's tours as secretary of transportation. "That spoke volumes to me about what kind of person and leader he was -- to take tense jobs, bring people along and get the job done."

Outside public life, friends say, Porcari is a family-centric father of five who built an addition on his house in Cheverly for his grandfather, who lived there for five years until he died at 100 in 2007. Living across the street from Porcari and his wife, Heidi, is Porcari's younger brother, Chuck, who worked as press secretary for Parris N. Glendening (D) when Glendening was governor of Maryland.

Chuck Porcari said their father, who worked as head of public housing in Rochester, N.Y., and their late mother, who was a nurse, "taught us it was important to give back."

Maloney said his friend lives up to his squeaky-clean image: "He's at work early, he's home with his family at night, and he's at church on Sundays."

Porcari, who grew up the third of five children, recently said he doesn't like to stand out. "I'm boring," he insisted. Although usually accessible to reporters, he declined to be interviewed for this story, the traditional position of nominees before confirmation hearings.