LaHood Likely DOT Pick

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the Dec. 22 & 29 print edition of Transport Topics.

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name retiring Illinois Republican U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood to be his transportation secretary.

Transportation industry officials said LaHood, who has served on the House transportation and appropriations committees, was a solid, albeit unexpected, choice to lead the Department of Transportation.

The DOT position could be an increasingly important one, since Obama has said he will make infrastructure spending a key component of his multibillion-dollar economic recovery stimulus package. The department also faces challenging issues, including reauthorization of the multiyear highway spending legislation, driver hours-of-service rules, road tolls and highway privatization.

Several news outlets, including Bloomberg News and The Associated Press, reported last week that Obama would soon formally nominate the 63-year-old LaHood.

Tim Lynch, a senior vice president of American Trucking Associations, said the group worked with LaHood when he was on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“He has knowledge over a wide range of transportation modes and issues,” Lynch said.

Elected in 1994, LaHood served on the transportation panel before taking his current assignment on the House Appropriations Committee.

A biography on LaHood’s Web site said that during his time in the House, he “has particularly emphasized rural development through assisting economic efforts and infrastructure improvements [in the] rural communities he represents.”

LaHood’s district includes Peoria, Ill., home to Caterpillar Inc.’s headquarters. While Caterpillar has decided to exit the heavy-duty truck engine market by 2010, the company is a dominant force in the global construction equipment business (6-16, p. 1).

In 2002, LaHood led an unsuccessful charge to get the Environmental Protection Agency to delay implementation of rules cutting diesel-powered truck emissions, a move backed by Caterpillar.

In 2005, LaHood was present when President Bush signed the current highway bill into law at a Caterpillar factory, and he called the $286.4 billion spending package “a much-needed boost to our economy from the federal government.”

“This investment in the infrastructure of our state will put people to work, increasing tax revenue to help address our state’s huge budget hole and helping to move the economy of Illinois in the right direction,” he said at the time.

During debate on the legislation, LaHood voted for the so-called Kennedy amendment, which would have restricted tolling on interstate highways only to projects that create new capacity, and only until those new lanes were paid for (3-14-05, p. 3).

ATA lobbied hard for the provision, which was defeated by a 265-155 margin.

More recently, LaHood voted to shut down the Bush administration’s controversial cross-border trucking program with Mexico.

Teamsters union President James Hoffa called LaHood “a longtime, strong ally” in the battle to keep Mexican trucks off U.S. highways.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told reporters LaHood would be “an excellent” transportation secretary.

Oberstar said that what DOT “needs more than anything is high-level, effective management to get all the parts working and get all the parts talking to each other.” And LaHood “is not an ideologue,” he said.

Transportation officials said LaHood has a reputation for bipartisanship and could be an asset for the trucking industry.

LaHood “has always been . . . very much an advocate of infrastructure investment. From that standpoint [his nomination] seems to be very, very good for transportation and trucking in general,” said Rod Nofziger, director of government affairs for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

George Billows, executive director of the Illinois Trucking Association, said he thought LaHood would be “fair and equitable” in his dealings with the industry. “He hasn’t been our biggest supporter or opponent, quite honestly,” he said.

Billows said he thought LaHood might favor “doing some private-public partnerships and probably wanting to raise fees a little bit.”

Jack Schenendorf, vice chairman of a congressional commission that reported on the nation’s infrastructure needs earlier this year, said LaHood has “a good grounding and background in transportation. I think he’ll do very, very well.”

If confirmed by the Senate, LaHood would face a host of challenges in the nation’s transportation system.