Executive Overview
Public transportation in the United States stands at a critical juncture, caught between the urgent demands of climate change, population growth, and shifting commuter habits, and the deadening weight of institutional inertia. While much of the public debate centers on funding deficits, vehicle shortages, and shifting demographics, a more insidious barrier to progress often goes unexamined: the archaic administrative structures governing our public agencies.
In a recent episode of the Talking Headways podcast, host Jeff Wood sat down with Joshua Schank, author of the insightful new book New Tricks for Old Bureaucracies: Improving Policy Outcomes in the Public Sector. Schank brings a wealth of hard-earned experience to the table, having navigated the upper echelons of urban transportation governance, including a transformative and often eye-opening stint at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro).
The conversation peeled back the layers of urban transit dysfunction, exposing a complex web of political proxy wars, conflicting agency motives, and structural roadblocks. Schank’s thesis is direct and uncompromising: while public agencies are often bogged down by rules ostensibly designed to protect the public, the cumulative effect of these regulations creates a bureaucratic labyrinth. Within this maze, transportation experts are frequently sidelined by hyper-political actors, and regional objectives are sacrificed to satisfy hyper-local political ambitions.
This article explores the core themes of Schank and Wood’s discussion, dissecting the operational realities of mega-agencies like LA Metro, analyzing the unique challenges posed by California’s governance and transparency laws, and evaluating the absolute necessity for sweeping structural reforms in public sector management.
Detailed Chronology: The Shock of the Inner Workings
To understand why public transit projects so often face delays, ballooning budgets, and misaligned priorities, one must examine the daily operational reality of transit agencies. During their discussion, Jeff Wood highlighted a particularly striking passage in Schank’s book concerning "Board staff"—a bureaucratic layer so convoluted and frustrating that Wood jokingly suggested turning it into a dark-comedy political television show akin to Parks and Recreation.
Schank’s entry into LA Metro offered a swift and sobering education in the realities of municipal bureaucracy. Having started his career at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York, Schank was no stranger to large public entities. Yet, nothing prepared him for the specific brand of institutional friction he encountered in Los Angeles.
The Naivety of Shared Goals
Schank admitted that, like many entering public service, he operated under a naive assumption: that everyone working within a transit agency shared a fundamental commitment to the mission. He believed that professionals at a transit authority fundamentally cared about moving people more efficiently, expanding public transportation access, and reducing automobile dependency.
However, the reality of public administration is far more fragmented. As Schank points out, a massive public agency is an ecosystem of disparate departments and career motivations. The professional running Human Resources is rarely driven by a passion for bus scheduling or light rail expansion. The director of procurement is typically focused on legal compliance and vendor management, not the modal split of urban commuters.
The Rise of the Board Staff
The most egregious structural anomaly, according to Schank, is the phenomenon of the "Board staff." In major regional bodies like LA Metro, the governing board is composed of elected officials—mayors, city council members, and county supervisors—for whom the transit agency is rarely, if ever, a full-time job. Their primary professional obligations lie elsewhere in municipal or county governance.
To manage their responsibilities on the transit board, these elected officials rely on dedicated aides known as Board staff. While analogous to congressional staffers in the federal legislative branch, the dynamic at a regional transit agency differs fundamentally. Congressional staffers draft legislation and advise lawmakers on national policy behind the scenes. At LA Metro, however, Board staff wield an outsized, proxy-like influence over highly technical, multi-billion-dollar transportation decisions.
The Brown Act and Closed-Door Proxies
The complexity of this dynamic is turbocharged by open-meeting laws, specifically California’s Brown Act. Designed to ensure transparency, the Brown Act mandates that discussions among a quorum of elected board members must occur in public forums, effectively banning behind-the-scenes deliberations among the board.
To navigate this restriction, transit agencies established "Board staff briefings." These closed-door sessions allow aides to preview upcoming board items and signal how their respective bosses are likely to vote.
Consequently, a critical bottleneck is formed. Professional transportation engineers, planners, and policy experts—individuals with decades of specialized domain knowledge—must present their carefully researched solutions to a room of political aides. These staffers, sometimes early in their careers and fundamentally motivated by political calculus rather than transit planning, hold the power to shape, stall, or kill policy initiatives. For a seasoned transit professional, encountering this opaque, proxy-driven hierarchy is nothing short of a systemic shock.
Supporting Context & Metrics: When Structures Collide
The administrative quagmire described by Schank is not merely an isolated quirk of LA Metro; it is symptomatic of a broader structural crisis in American public administration. When individual rules designed for noble purposes are layered on top of one another, the resulting institutional architecture often defeats its own objectives.
The Paradox of Transparency and Accountability
The web of regulations governing public transit agencies—ranging from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and open-meeting statutes like the Brown Act to federal procurement rules and municipal oversight mandates—share a common philosophical ancestor: the protection of the public interest.
- Transparency: Laws like the Brown Act ensure that democracy happens in the sunlight, preventing secret backroom deals that could harm constituents.
- Environmental Review: Statutes like CEQA ensure that major infrastructure projects do not disproportionately burden communities or destroy natural resources without rigorous review.
- Public Procurement: Rules governing bidding and contracting are designed to prevent corruption and ensure fiscal responsibility.
Individually, these mechanisms make sense. However, as Jeff Wood observed during the podcast, when these structures are mashed together without holistic coordination, they create a recipe that "doesn’t taste good."
The cumulative effect is hyper-bureaucratic paralysis. Agencies spend more time navigating procedural hurdles, holding briefings for staffers, and drafting compliance documentation than they do delivering actual transit service. Public trust is eroded not because transit workers are incompetent, but because the system is structurally designed to resist timely decision-making.
The Structural Flaw of Elected Boards
At the heart of the governance crisis is the composition of transit boards themselves. Schank argues compellingly that relying on elected officials to directly govern regional transportation agencies is fundamentally problematic.
Elected officials are, by definition and necessity, hyper-local actors. A county supervisor or city mayor is beholden to the voters of their specific district or municipality. When an elected official sits on a regional transit board, they inevitably view every policy decision, route alignment, and capital investment through the narrow lens of local electoral politics.
- Will this bus lane upset local merchants who fear losing parking spaces?
- Will this rail station placement benefit my constituents more than the neighboring district?
- How will this vote play in the next municipal election cycle?
These localized political pressures are diametrically opposed to the regional perspective required to run an effective mass transit network. A transit system must be planned as a cohesive regional ecosystem, yet it is governed by a patchwork of parochial interests. In California, where nearly all transit agencies utilize boards composed of elected officials (or, in some cases, officials elected directly to transit boards—a structure Schank notes is often even more dysfunctional), this tension is a daily reality.
Official Statements & Expert Insights
The dialogue between Schank and Wood underscores a growing movement among urbanists, policy analysts, and former public administrators who are willing to look past conventional talking points and critique the internal machinery of government.
Reflecting on his time in public service and his academic research, Joshua Schank emphasizes that operational success requires confronting these uncomfortable internal realities:
"You wind up with these staff who have an outsized role and outsized influence, and that’s one thing that makes it unusual… You essentially have staffers who are 25 or 30 years old, or maybe they’ve been there 40 years, but they’re political people who are reacting to transportation experts who have come up with answers to solutions."
Schank’s critique is not an indictment of the individuals working within these roles—many of whom are dedicated public servants trying to do their best within a broken framework. Rather, it is a scathing critique of the incentive structures that pit political survival against technical expertise.
Furthermore, Schank addresses the fundamental mismatch of institutional motivations:
"Everything that the transit agency does is going to be put through that hyper-political lens, and it’s gonna be much harder to have the regional perspective. I would argue, based on my experience at Metro, that strong governance reforms are necessary in California if we’re going to have public transit agencies that are successful."
This perspective shifts the conversation around transit reform. For decades, advocates have argued primarily for increased subsidies, federal grants, and tax measures. While funding remains vital, Schank’s work suggests that pouring money into an unreformed bureaucratic structure is akin to pouring water into a sieve. Without fixing the underlying governance models, agencies will continue to struggle with implementation, cost overruns, and misaligned priorities.
Future Outlook: The Path Toward Public Sector Reform
As cities across North America grapple with congestion, housing crises, and climate targets, the performance of public transit agencies has never been more consequential. If agencies like LA Metro and other regional bodies across California and the United States are to meet the challenges of the 21st century, institutional reform must move from the theoretical realm to the legislative agenda.
What might a roadmap for reform look like based on the insights of practitioners like Joshua Schank?
1. Decoupling Transit Governance from Hyper-Local Politics
A serious reimagining of transit board structures is long overdue. While democratic oversight is non-negotiable, structuring boards entirely out of elected officials whose primary political survival depends on hyper-local constituents guarantees gridlock. Future governance models must explore professionalized boards, hybrid models combining elected accountability with appointed technical experts, or independent governance structures insulated from short-term electoral cycles, similar to how central banks or utility regulators operate.
2. Streamlining the Bureaucratic Interface
Agencies must audit their internal communication and decision-making pathways. The proliferation of proxy layers, such as closed-door Board staff briefings designed solely to navigate open-meeting laws around rigid political structures, must be modernized. Empowering professional planners and administrative experts to execute policy without needing to decode the shifting political whims of dozens of independent political aides is essential for operational agility.
3. Cultivating Mission-Driven Organizational Culture
As Schank points out, large bureaucracies naturally attract individuals whose primary passions lie in administration, procurement, or compliance rather than transit advocacy. Public agencies must work proactively to align organizational culture around core mission metrics—such as rider satisfaction, speed, reliability, and regional connectivity—ensuring that every department, from HR to finance, understands and supports the overarching transit mission.
4. Embracing Transparency Without Paralysis
Transparency laws like the Brown Act must be evaluated for their unintended operational consequences. While public accountability must never be compromised, legal frameworks should evolve to allow for efficient, collaborative administrative problem-solving that does not force agencies to rely on shadow-staff networks to conduct preliminary governance business.
Conclusion
Joshua Schank’s New Tricks for Old Bureaucracies and his candid discussion on Talking Headways provide a much-needed reality check for urbanists and transit advocates. The path to better public transit is paved with more than just concrete, steel, and capital funding; it requires a courageous willingness to dismantle, redesign, and modernize the bureaucratic engines of government.
Until policy makers address the foundational governance structures, board dynamics, and administrative bottlenecks that paralyze agencies like LA Metro, public transit will continue to fight an uphill battle against its own internal machinery. The warning has been issued, the diagnosis is clear, and the blueprint for reform is on the table—now it is up to public leaders to summon the political will to enact change.
