All in the Family - Transport Pork

[lpetrich]

McConnell brushes off question about special treatment from Chao | TheHill
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are married.

“You know, I was complaining to her just last night, 169 projects and Kentucky got only five. I hope we'll do a lot better next year,” McConnell told reporters.

Chao met 4 times as often with Kentucky officials as from any other state - POLITICO - "Transportation secretary met far more often with constituents of her husband Mitch McConnell than officials from any other state."

In all, 25 percent of Chao’s scheduled meetings with local officials of any state from January 2017 to March 2018 were with Kentuckians, who make up only about 1.3 percent of the U.S. population. The next closest were Indiana and Georgia, with 6 percent of meetings each, according to Chao’s calendar records, the only ones that have been made public.

At least five of Chao’s 18 meetings with local Kentuckians were requested in emails from McConnell staffers, who alerted Chao’s staffers which of the officials were “friends” or “loyal supporters,” according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

All I can say is: oink oink oink oink oink.

Yet officials from the New York and New Jersey area say they yearn for the kind of attention she gives to her husband’s constituents. While officials from small towns in Kentucky got to sit down with the secretary in the ninth-floor Lincoln conference room at department headquarters to discuss riverfront projects and highway improvements, she has given the cold shoulder to those advocating for one of the country’s largest infrastructure projects: the repair and replacement of the bridges and tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey that together are known as Gateway.

It has been hard to get in touch with her about that project.

Meanwhile, Chao has yet to meet with another entity with a tense relationship with DOT: the California High-Speed Rail Authority, from which DOT clawed back nearly $1 billion in rail funds earlier this year. The authority is looking to build a high-speed connection between the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, which is intended to compress a six-hour car ride into a two-hour-and-forty-minute train trip.

Hard to get in touch with her about that one also.

Could a problem be partisanship? Both big projects are in heavily Democratic areas.

 

[lpetrich]

Rep. Peter DeFazio calls for audit into Elaine Chao's alleged Kentucky favors - POLITICO

A senior House Democrat has asked the Transportation Department's internal watchdog to investigate whether Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao showed undue favoritism to Kentucky constituents of her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

On Friday, Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, wrote the DOT's inspector general asking him to probe any conflicts of interest Chao has. Specifically DeFazio cited two POLITICO stories, one detailing Chao's disproportionate number of meetings with Kentucky officials during her first year in the position, and another suggesting she had designated a member of her senior staff to serve as a point person for Kentucky issues, which the agency denies.

That I'd like to see. I'd like to see how much their hands have been caught in the cookie jar.