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Saturday, May 03, 2008

Revolving Door Just Wont Fly Anymore

By

      Any frequent flier knows the airlines prefer to book tickets that are round-trip. Who knew that applied to punching career tickets as well?
       Linda Daschle was an executive with the industry's lobbying arm before a stint as deputy administrator and acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that regulates and is lobbied by the airlines. From there she returned to lobbying, where her team last year earned at least $440,000 from just one client, American Airlines.
       Yes, that last name is familiar; she's married to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. And, yes, lobbyists also focus their efforts on Congress, both as a policy fulcrum and as pool of talent. Ex-Sens. Trent Lott and John Breaux lobbied their old colleagues for Delta Airlines during the past year, as did four ex-members of the Bush administration and 17 congressional staffers.
       Megan Rae Rosia flew with Northwest Airlines as government affairs chief for 12 years before she landed at the FAA as chief of government and industry affairs. Russell Chew came off a 17-year stint at American Airlines to take the chief operating officer position at the FAA. After four years there, he upgraded to a high-level job back in the private sector at JetBlue.
       Sharon Pinkerton was on one side of budget battles in meetings with the White House officials in 2005 as an FAA assistant administrator and back two years on the other side as a lobbyist.
       The FAA's chief counsel should know the ropes. Before answering the call to public service Kerry B. Long was part of a law firm that represented an airline, an airplane leasing operation and a subsidiary of Boeing. But, in a sense, that experience was a handicap; Long recused himself from matters involving those former clients for a year.
       That's decent. But it would be better still if these frequent fliers by law were stuck in a holding pattern for at least a year landing a job regulating their former colleagues or representing the industry in front of an agency they used to work for.
       Maybe the revolving door at the FAA can't be blocked off, but it certainly can be slowed way down.
      

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