In Black America; Federal Transit Administration with Gordon J. Linton

Turn on the notifications during public warning. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. In fact, I can grow up from North Philadelphia in the inner city of the city of Philadelphia in neighborhoods where there were people who put all kinds of barriers in front of me

as I grew up and they were naysayers that said that you could not do and you would not do and to here to be have selected by the President of the United States to have the Federal Transit Administration with some 480 employees and a $4.6 billion budget and 10 regional offices across this country if in fact I can do it than you can do. Gordon J. Linton, Administrator, U.S. Federal Transit Administration, chosen by President Clinton, Mr. Linton, comes to his present position with a background rich in public policy and transportation experience. In his six terms in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, he served in a number of leadership positions, including Vice Chairman of the House Appropriation Committee and Chairman of the Transportation Committee's subcommittee on Public Transportation. He also was chairman of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus. This past September, Mr. Linton was a keynote speaker at the 5th Annual Convention and Seminars of the Texas Association of Minority Business and Apprises Austin Metropolitan Business

Resource Center, Hailed in Austin, Texas. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, Gordon J. Linton, Administrator, Federal Transit Administration, in Black America. The elevation to be the head of the Federal Transit Administration is indeed been a blessing and an honor. I cannot say that this was only done through the graces of my work, but I said to many, many people that, in fact, I was saying to Barbara Burton, who obviously is somebody who

is a mover and a shaker, to continue to work on behalf of both this organization and all the other things that she's been involved in, and I always say that by their works, you shall know them, and if this young lady is a reflection of her, then it's clear that she's making a major contribution. But that indeed has been an honor for me to be elevated to this position, and quite frankly, I have to get tribute to many of those who have come before me, and that includes the Rosa Parks, who got tired and feet got tired and decided that she wanted to sit at the back of the bus anymore. That includes the Pullman Porters that worked throughout this nation. That includes all those who made major contributions to freedom writers who wrote throughout this country to make sure that we had a desegregation on all our buses throughout the nation. All of that and all those efforts gave fruition to me standing here today as the head of the Federal Transit Administration.

When most Americans think about public transportation, they think about buses and rail vehicles that affect their daily lives, their local transit system. Public transit, however, may include commuter freight boats, trolleys, incline railways, subways, and people movers. Whatever the mode of travel, convenience, cost, and accessibility are the primary concerns in the minds of the transit consumer. The Federal Government through the Federal Transit Administration provide financial and technical assistance to the local transit system. FTA is one of nine major agencies within the U.S. Department of Transportation, headed by an administrator appointed by the President, FTA administers a program of financial assistance for the providers of urban and rural public mass transportation. This past September, Gordon J. Linton brought his vast knowledge of public transportation to the fifth annual convention and seminars of BOSS held in Austin, Texas. The following is an excerpt of his keynote presentation, Mr. Gordon J. Linton. I'm very excited to be part of this administration at this time in our history.

I served six terms in the Pennsylvania legislature and was very, very happy with what I was doing there and very excited about the contributions that I was able to make. I think Lee made some reference to a few, and I want to elaborate on some others, not because of necessarily my importance, but the importance of the accomplishment, but more important to young people like Jackie, so they get a sense of what, in fact, people have contribute of color and the possibilities that they are, in fact, for them to make a real contribution to this work. Serving in the legislature for six terms, I'm very excited to say that, as was in an indicator, I was responsible and led the charge for the dedicated funding source for transportation in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and that was historic to note. But in addition to that, I helped draft the governor's executive order for minority and women business in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Also was responsible for the seat belt law in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as well as the front law that made it a third degree felony in the state of Pennsylvania for those who masquerade as a minority or women on business in their efforts to seek contracts as they move forth through doing business with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and also put in place a reviving loan and bonding program for minority businesses who sought to get contracts with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We put together a $5 million on bonding guarantee and reviving loan fund in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Those are just few of the legislative contributions that I made as a legislator in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. One of the things that, when I first had a chance to appear in the staff retreat among all of my colleagues in the Department of Transportation and try to lay out what is our agenda? What is it that I want to do as the titlerhead of the FTA for this nation?

What are the things that I am hoping to accomplish over the next four to eight years? I need your help on that. And I guess that one of the things that was very, very significant to me, and I think I even, when I talked about this, that even got the attention of the secretary. And Rodney and I were both making our presentation at then, and we both talked about the fact that our agencies are founded in various provisions of the Constitution. And unlike the other modes in transportation, where they are in fact rooted in the commerce clause of the Constitution, FTA is rooted in the clause of the Constitution to promote the general welfare.

So that means a couple of things, that means that unlike some of the other modes where we only measure our accomplishments in terms of economics and cost effectiveness and cost benefit analysis and how many miles we have driven and how much money is being spent per mile, we also have to measure our effectiveness by measuring the human dimension, that we bring our emphasis, not just out of the commerce clause, but also the clause to promote the general welfare. So that means that when we look at public transportation and when I look at public transportation, it's not just the rails, it's not just the buses, it's not just getting people to and from, but it's where did you get people to and from, and what it is that they achieve by getting there and that transportation is in fact part of the web of their existence of their lives and we have to view it as that. So there's in fact a human dimension that's relies in transportation as we view it and

that's a very, very important focus of this administration. So you're going to see some different things coming out of Washington than you've probably seen of the last 12 years out of this department. And you can't do any of that without money. That fought in the legislature for a number of years and served as vice-year the appropriations committee and know how to put together budgets and understand how in fact one would like to achieve all that one can achieve in life, but if you don't have the dollars, you can't get it done. And we've been very fortunate that this president has made a major commitment to transportation. As we sit here today and hopefully if everything is going well on the hill, I'm looking and waiting and hearing for the right phone call because we're concerned about what's happening with our appropriation. But even still, it appears that we will end up with somewhere near the $4.6 billion that the president has put in his budget and that we have presented to the House and the Senate

for this coming fiscal year for FTA's budget. And it's historic in terms of a major federal infusion of dollars for mass transportation in this country. That's the indication of the kind of commitment that this president and this administration is making to transportation in general and public transportation in FTA specifically. And I'm already working on the $95 and we're hoping to elevate that even more, can't we talk about that yet folks, that's a little private. And I don't think the folks at OMB would allow me to leave here if I was to spread any additional information about what's going on there. But it's just to give you an indication that we're putting our money where our mouth is. That when in fact we say that we're going to make a major commitment to transit in this country, we're going to do that. And heard me speak earlier about my commitment and experience with DBEs and WBEs and the major

commitments that I've made throughout my history. I was excited a couple of weeks ago to be in California with the secretary. And in California we arranged two DBE trade fairs, one in Oakland and one in Los Angeles. And when I was approached by someone from our office, a small business utilization in the secretary's office, and I was told that the secretary wanted to do a couple of trade fairs. And I said to him, I said, well, I don't want to say anything about trade fairs. But you know, I've been in the legislature for 11 years, I've been working on issues of minority and women business for all of those years, and you know, people get tied to trade fairs because very often you're a small minority firm, a woman firm. You don't have an extensive amount of staff.

People have you come to these trade fairs. You don't have a lot of time. You don't have all the resources of the large firms. And they have you running around with these trade fairs, filling out all these documents, making you fill out all these forms, going through all the certification, and you walk away with no dollars for all your energy and all your time you're expended. So I said, I'm not really excited about trade fairs. You're going to have me have to tell me something different than what has happened historically. And he said to me, well, you know, we're going to give away some contracts right there on the spot at this trade fair. So there are going to be some people that are going to come there and be able to negotiate some contracts and they're going to walk away with some money. I said, oh, now I think I can endorse this trade fair because you're speaking my language. And while I was at the trade fair, the secretary stood up and said to those individuals in California. And he said that I'm making a commitment as a secretary of transportation that our department is going to be the best department in federal government on DBE participation.

So when the secretary left the podium and came back down with the rest of us, I said, well, Mr. Secretary, I'm making a commitment to you that in the Department of Transportation, the FTA is going to be the number one agency within the best department for DBE participation in the nation. So that's his commitment. That's my commitment. So I just want to say that to the people that are here today. One of the most exciting things that you get the chance to do, Jackie, when you head to federal transit administration, is you get a chance to go around and give away money. And even when I was in the general assembly, and we had a budget in Pennsylvania that approaches $12 billion.

And you know, sometimes we got excited about that. And I had a chance to give away occasionally a million dollar check, and I had a chance to advice to your appropriations to write into the budget some projects for a million dollar here and a couple of million dollars there. And I was pretty excited about that and felt a little good about it that I was making some major contributions. Well, I've had a couple of experiences recently to give away $75 million checks, and $45 million checks. And you get a chance to really see where you're making some major contributions to things in this country. But many of those contributions very often was building steel and cement and providing major investments in the infrastructure, which is in fact important. And if in fact we're going to create the kind of jobs that we need to create in this country, we're going to have to do that. But I've also had the opportunity recently to give away some grants that were smaller in nature.

But they also kind of reflect the human dimension emphasis of this department. One of those grants most recently was to a high school in Washington, D.C., Cardoza High School, in fact last Friday I was able to give this grant to Cardoza High School in Washington, D.C., it wasn't a $75 million grant, but it was a $75,000 grant, which is very significant to one high school in one city. And that grant was to create a trans tech academy where in fact we're making investment in lives of young people to introduce them to internships, work, experiences, curriculum development to expose them to the opportunities in transportation. And you know when I go to these other places and give away these $75 million grants and I sit around to poll them and there's all these people who are applauding and everybody

was seeing how great it is and the most exceptional thing that I heard when I was at Cardoza High School with the $75,000 grant was there were two women that were involved in this project and they said to me that this was the proudest day in my life because this is something that I've worked for for a long time and to see you standing there with all these young people, with that check and making major investment in their lives is extremely significant to me. And that meant more to me than giving away the $75 million grant in San Francisco and Los Angeles and some of the other places that I've been in in the last couple of weeks. But that's also indicative of the change in climate and the change in attitude that you will see by this administrator, by this administration and this commitment to transportation. But realizing that transportation is not an isolation that is in part of the very fabric of this country, of this nation, of the people in this city here and the people across

this state and we're going to make sure that it's integrated in the daily life experiences of all the people across this nation. Another specific example, once again, a humanizing transportation, Dr. LaDay from somebody else from, I've had some historical relationships with one of the other things that was so marvelous about coming to Austin today was that I got a chance to see so many friends. And I had, it's Johnson to pick me up at the airport and was able to be there for me. And these are people that I've known for years as a member of the conference minority transportation officials, which was a way that I got started in the transportation industry over 11 years ago. And Dr. LaDay was at one of the first meetings that I attended in Washington, D.C. that gave some history to my environment and the transportation community. So people need to know that there's a connection, that there are people out here which have

been in a long, long established network that know me. In fact, that raises a point because a couple of days ago, there was a gentleman that came into my office and said, well, you know, you're a mystery to a lot of people in the transit industry. And they have some concerns and fears because they don't know you. And I said, well, that's a change of pace. Because so often, there were people like me who was on the outsiders and we were a mystery to everybody else. And I already, you know, there's a lot of people in this room that know me and I know you're a mystery to them and these were people who were before were the outsiders. Well, I had the women transportation seminar who set with me the other day, I have Compto, I have a number of groups that, two years were on the fringes of the transportation industry. Well as we move forth under this administration and we engage people who have been in the outside and bring everybody on the inside as a partnership, all these people are going

to feel right at home with this administrator, with this secretary and with President Clinton. That's what we're about. I can probably go on for days and days and just tell you about all of the great things that we're going to do in FTA. We're putting together a strategic plan, we have some very, very fine programs and ideas for the industry and we talked about several today. I think we had a chance to hear that Lee made reference to our efforts to customize transportation and make transportation consumer friendly and we're looking to try to make sure that we use and develop technology and use that technology to make sure that we have smart card systems that we have interactive communication systems that allow people to go in and push a button and tell them how to get from one place to another.

We're looking at all of the alternative fuels that's going on right here in the state of Texas, that's going on right here to transit authority here without going to chance to tour and look at with the compressed national gas, we're looking at all of those kind of things and trying to make sure that we use the technology that's being developed in this country to make transportation customer friendly. But we're also looking at exporting our products that far too long we in this country have been recipients of the development of products that have been developed in other countries and we have been purchasing and then we wonder why in fact we don't have the kind of economic development that we need in our country to survive and prosper. So we're looking to take the products that we develop here in this country and take them abroad. The secretary who many of you might have seen on television has been up with the Amtrak derailment but he's on his way to Saudi Arabia and part of that is the effort to take

our products across the waters to begin to expand our market for transportation products. I've been talking recently with some individuals from China and we're looking at some developing markets over there. We have to think large. We can no longer think that we can only operate within our domestic economy. We have to realize that there is, in fact, the global economy. There's a role for transportation in it. All of us who are involved in the transportation industry need to be thinking about how do we participate, how do we expand our market, how do we make our products better, how do we market our goods and use the talents of young people like that to be involved in promoting and developing the kind of projects that we can take across the China and put to market and put people back to work for good jobs and good pay. And we're going to do that in part of this administration. One of the other things that we're looking at in terms of technology is defense conversion.

Many of you aware of the defense conversion proposals that are going on and that we'll be looking at some projects that have come in through ARPA that we're hoping to fund for dual usage of products, using products that we want to use in defense industry and make them also available to transportation users. All of you WBEs and DBEs who have not gotten involved in that process need to find out what's going on in that area because there's a lot of work and there's a lot of opportunity that's going on in the area of defense conversion. You need to get involved, you need to find out who's doing what. When we were in California, the secretary asked those who were in the audience how many of those were aware of just the projects that were being planned in the state of California around defense conversion and they were only like one or two hands that went up an audience where there were four or five hundred people. So many of you in this room need to plug into and find out what's going on in the areas of defense conversion and what kind of opportunities they are for you to participate.

One of which I'm excited about is the possibility of using some of the products that we use in the stealth bomber in producing light, low floor buses. There's all type of opportunities that we have available with all of the defense technology that have many, many applications to transportation and we and FTA are going to be at the forefront of trying to make sure that happens. The bottom line of all of this is that this administration believes in mass transit. We believe that it's connected to the various fabric of the people in this country. We see transportation is not just a way of moving goods and moving people but we see transportation is moving lives.

I'm going to make sure I give your commitment today that as a 13th FTA administrator that is my desire to be the best not because of any ego involvement but only because I want to leave a legacy for young people like that one and want her to see that there are in fact contributions that people of color can make, have made and she understands what the bright future stores for her. That's why I'm making your commitment to you today, everybody in this audience that when my time is up with the help of this great staff that I have, by the way, I need to allow the FTA staff people who are here kind of stand up. That when we are finished, this team, this is a bad team and when we are finished, there

are going to be some major changes in transportation industry and transportation for the people across this nation. That's my pledge, that's my commitment. I've been so excited about the people that were already there when I got there. One of the things that happened during the last administration and I can say that because I'm a political appointee and there's only one person that can tell me that I'm not a job and his name is Bill Clinton so that gives me a lot of latitude. That mass transportation in this country in the last 12 years, there was an effort to kill the agency, that all of the progress that was made in terms of increasing ridership was diminished because there was a diminishing amount of federal funds that was committed to this agency.

There was an effort to reduce staff and that there was on a self-destructive path in Umpta and FTA. We here today to say that that has changed, that there is a major commitment to make sure that not just we survive but that we prosper and that each and every one of you that's affected by this industry also prosper. But the exciting thing about that is that this staff has been coupled and had handcuffs on and gotten a sense that all of their creativity has been stifled and got the sense that when I was there and became there that there was all this energy and enthusiasm that was just kind of waiting to say unleash me, we have something to contribute, we can make things happen. The folks just give me an opportunity of some direction and some money and some support. Well, I'm going to give them the opportunity, some money, the support and the direction and we're looking to move FTA along and move this nation along over the next decade.

Gordon J. Linton Administrator, Federal Transit Administration. I would like to thank boss five for their assistance in the production of this program. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked of future in black America programs, write us. Views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for in black America's technical producer Cliff Hargrove, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America cassettes. Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in black America cassettes. Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this

is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Join me this week on in black America. All of you WBEs and DBEs who have not gotten involved in that process need to find out what's going on in that area because there's a lot of work and there's a lot of opportunity going on in the area of defense conversion. The Federal Transit Administration with Gordon J. Linton this week on in black America.