Metro’s inspector general, Geoffrey A. Cherrington, has been busy since he took over as the transit agency’s internal watchdog nearly two years ago.
He has beefed up staffing and, breaking from previous practice, taken steps to wall off his investigators and their computers from the potentially prying eyes of the agency they oversee. After reports surfaced that a Silver Line contractor fraudulently passed off inferior concrete on the project, his office stepped in to help keep an eye on the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s (MWAA) $5.8 billion build-out of the Northern Virginia rail line.
Cherrington has taken on his role with gusto. While commuting to work, he has been snapping pictures of conditions inside Metrorail stations and train cars that he thinks the agency should be aware of.
Asked what he could do better, Cherrington replies: “Everything.”
“As Billy Joel says, ‘Only fools are satisfied,’” Cherrington said in a recent interview at Metro headquarters. It doesn’t even bother him too much that he was characterized as a “nickel-and-dime” gumshoe after his team busted two Metro employees for alleged double-dipping. The two employees were charged with felonies for pretending to work for Metro and Amtrak at the same time, causing total losses to the agencies of $7,500 or so.
“And I can understand where someone says, ‘Jesus, look at these construction projects and the Silver Line — and the IG is seriously wasting its time with $1,000?’ ” Cherrington said. “And my answer is, ‘Yes, we are’ — because it sets an example.”
It’s an attitude that has won Cherrington good reviews from rider advocates, members of the Metro board — to which he reports — and elected officials from Washington jurisdictions that fund and rely on Metro, including Capitol Hill. Their consensus is that Cherrington has been more aggressive than his predecessor.
But they also say that Cherrington’s office still lacks the autonomy that his federal counterparts have and remains too beholden to the agency it oversees — a complaint expressed by Helen Lew, the former inspector general from whom Cherrington took over after her departure. Cherrington assumed the post in April 2017.
“He gets high marks from me and I think from a number of others as well,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). She said that if members of Congress trust anything, it is the corps of inspectors general assigned to root out waste and fraud in the federal government. But she, too, is uneasy about the limits placed on Metro’s Office of Inspector General.
“I am not used to IGs under the control of the agency that they are supposed to be examining,” Norton said. “And that is essentially what you have here.”
For starters, Metro controls the inspector general’s budget and plays a significant role in hiring and vetting the IG’s staff. Cherrington’s office, owing to the statutory and legal foundations of Metro, also lacks its own general counsel. Instead, the Metro inspector general must rely on Metro’s general counsel — a situation that is somewhat analogous to a law enforcement agency relying on defense attorneys for legal advice.
Cherrington’s office lacks the authority to publish reports or audits without clearing them first with Metro board members and officials. The office also lacks procurement authority, which means it might not be able to buy materials necessary for an investigation without tipping off others. Even computer systems are shared to some extent — which is how a rogue Metro employee was able to set up keystroke monitors on the OIG a few years ago to see what it was up to.
“I would say by design the OIG at Metro is very constrained, and I think we have to change that,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who also said he thinks Cherrington has done well despite the office’s limitations. “I think Metro riders would welcome more accountability and transparency.”
Legislation sponsored by Connolly and others would be intended to do just that. As a condition of reauthorizing the bill that gave Metro $1.5 billion over 10 years, the legislation would require an overhaul of the Office of Inspector General, right down to providing separate legal counsel. In the meantime, Connolly urged Cherrington to push even harder.
“I think by and large he’s undertaken his responsibilities in a quiet and methodical way, and that’s to be applauded,” Connolly said. “But there may be something to be said for raising his visibility and that of his office so it has more authority and more weight.”
As might be expected from someone who previously served as an internal watchdog at the State Department, Cherrington takes a diplomatic approach to the delicate spot in which his office sometimes finds itself.
“This office is not hamstrung at all, in reality,” Cherrington said. “No one has ever impeded or stopped or even asked to stop an audit or investigation. There’s never been a report that’s not been accepted [by the Metro board]. There’s never been a report that’s not gone on the website that should have.”
But Cherrington also acknowledged that the relative independence he enjoys is a coincidence of several factors. There was the near meltdown of Metrorail that forced Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld to order an emergency closure in March 2016, and there was the aftermath of that episode, including new demands by the public for accountability and transparency. Plus, Wiedefeld himself, along with several members of the current board, appears less defensive in the face of scrutiny and more tolerant of it.
“If you put different personalities into this, and there were a general manager that had some sort of beef with the IG, or didn’t want [the IG] to look into the general manager’s business — or the board for that matter — then under the current guidelines, it could be problematic,” Cherrington said. “And that’s why I think we’re all working together to make permanent changes so I don’t leave my [successor] this same sort of lack of independence.”
In the meantime, Cherrington prefers to focus on what he’s been able to do. He’s hired former federal investigators and special agents from the Internal Revenue Service, helping to expand the staff from 32 in fiscal 2013 to a proposed 40 in fiscal 2020, beginning July 1. In the same period, the office’s annual budget has gone from about $3.6 million to a proposed $9.9 million. His office now has separate email and hotlines from the rest of Metro.
Cherrington has also created a fast-reaction unit — Inspections, Evaluations and Special Projects — to look into issues that create special concerns, and he has broken down barrier between functions within the office. An auditor might go out on a surveillance stakeout with a criminal investigator to better understand how to pull a case together and vice versa, Cherrington said.
He also has streamlined reports on audits and investigations to make them more accessible, and he has publicized many of them — unlike an investigation that found Metro workers and their supervisors had been conducting phony inspections as far back as 2013.
“The OIG reports are actually getting into the news. He’s actually finding things, which was not always the case in the past,” said Katherine Kortum, president of Metro’s Riders’ Advisory Council.
Michael Goldman, who represents Maryland on Metro’s board, said the inspector general’s Silver Line review and the investigations into the smaller cases of double-dipping and the like are exactly what the office should be doing. In the future, Goldman said, he hopes the office will plunge further into the operating and capital budgets to help the board resolve questions such as whether Metro should replace its bus fleet every 10 years or move to electric ones.
“I think those are things in a more robust IG operation may be things the board would like the IG to take a look at,” Goldman said.
So far, Cherrington said, his office has brought a return of $8.7 million to taxpayers last year, or about $4 for every dollar spent on the inspector general’s mission — a return on investment he said he would like to increase. Cherrington said he understands that the public, long hoping for a Metro turnaround and also counting on an aggressive oversight aimed at eliminating waste and fraud, has been on the verge of losing patience in recent years.
“We’re going to tackle the small things, and we’re going to tackle the larger issues,” he said. “I am very cautious not to get criticized as the toilet paper police. But I want the riders and the taxpayers to understand we’re going to look at everything.”
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