Obama announces two Amtrak board nominees

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CHamilton

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Obama announces two Amtrak board nominees

President Barack Obama yesterday announced his intent to nominate Derek Kan and Anthony Coscia to serve on Amtrak's board.

Kan is director of strategy at Genapsys. Previously, he served as a management consultant at Bain & Co. and as an adviser at Elliott Management. Kan also has served as a policy adviser to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, the chief economist for the Senate Republican Policy Committee and presidential management fellow at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Coscia currently serves on Amtrak's board, a position he’s held since June 2010. He is a partner at Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP. From 2003 to 2011, Coscia chaired the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's board.
 
Obama announces two Amtrak board nominees

President Barack Obama yesterday announced his intent to nominate Derek Kan and Anthony Coscia to serve on Amtrak's board.


Kan is director of strategy at Genapsys. Previously, he served as a management consultant at Bain & Co. and as an adviser at Elliott Management. Kan also has served as a policy adviser to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, the chief economist for the Senate Republican Policy Committee and presidential management fellow at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Coscia currently serves on Amtrak's board, a position he’s held since June 2010. He is a partner at Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP. From 2003 to 2011, Coscia chaired the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's board.
Apparently the policy is for both parties to be represented on Amtrak's Board. So, from Kan's LinkedIn page ...

Policy Advisor (Senate Republican Leader's Office) United States SenateJanuary 2008May 2010 (2 years 5 months)

Chief Economist / Policy Advisor (Senate Republican Leader's Office) United States Senate March 2006December 2007 (1 year 10 months)

Program Examiner

White House Office of Management and Budget

September 2004March 2006 (1 year 7 months)

Then a management consultant in L.A., and

most recently

Director of Strategy

GenapSys July 2014 – Present (1 year 1 month) Redwood City, CA
Good to get another member from the West.
 
Charlie, do you know much about Derek Kan? Seems his affiliation with Mitch McConnell could be a problem??
I don't know anything about either of the nominees. Woody is correct that the Amtrak board has traditionally been made up of members from both parties. There have been attempts to have representation from railroad passengers, but it doesn't appear that either of the nominees fit that category.
 
Please forgive my ignorance, but I am trying to figure out the power structure/struggle at Amtrak. How much influence/power does the board have over the president of Amtrak? Is it as much as Congress seems to?

And, on (I hope) a related note, is Joe Boardman retiring in a couple of years or isn't he? And if he is, who would be good candidates to replace him? (My qualifications (and mine may differ from those of others here) for a good candidate are someone whose priorities are excellent customer service in every area (from sleepers to the person on the phone), not being afraid for Amtrak to provide luxury as well as convenience (there is a market for both--dining car and café car, for example), the courage to stand up to Congress (someone who might actually tell John Mica to turn off his coffeepot in the office by 9:30 a.m. and see how he likes it), and a nationwide passenger rail system that treats the whole country as well as the Acela crowd in the Northeast.

I have read the history of the Amtrak presidents and realize that ones who have courage can get kicked out. To his credit, I think Joe Boardman has done what he can as a bureaucrat, but I think now we need someone who can be courageous but not get kicked out for being so.
 
Charlie, do you know much about Derek Kan? Seems his affiliation with Mitch McConnell could be a problem??
I've talked myself into thinking that the McConnell connection could be a good thing. Obviously Kan is a smart cookie. He will get to sit in Board meetings and learn that Boardman and Cascia and the others are also smart, trying very damn hard to make Amtrak work, and with some success.

Kan will hear over and over how even a little more capital investment in more equipment (how about a few dozen more Viewliners, please? LOL) is urgentf. But also how a handful of projects like the new Portal Bridge in NJ, the Potomac Long Bridge, the tracks D.C.-Richmond, the A-line short cut to Raleigh, and South of the Lake in Indiana could go a long, long way in improving operations and ridership.

I'm thinking that Kan is a quick learner, and he's gonna learn some good stuff about Amtrak and its plans that he never knew before. So maybe one day he'll tell his old boss, "You know, Amtrak isn't doing so bad, and more investment makes good business sense."

Well, a guy can hope.
 
We've gone from HSR being a major part of his 2008 platform to Obama nominating an anti-rail dude to Amtrak's board.
 
We've gone from HSR being a major part of his 2008 platform to Obama nominating an anti-rail dude to Amtrak's board.
Lyndon B. Johnson famously said of one guy, "I'd rather have him in the tent and pissing out, than out of the tent and pissing in."

I'm thinking that Kan and McConnell would be hard pressed to become more anti-Amtrak. But here's a chance to educate Kan and for him to educate McConnell. So let's see how it goes.

Allow me to stray into partisan politics to observe, it seems like some of the haters are against passenger trains, and HSR especially, exactly because Obama is for them. Some of these haters would give up ice cream and apple pie if Obama started talking about how good they are. But Obama will be gone in 2017. We'll have a white person in the White House. Anyone and everything could change.

Did you notice the item elsewhere about Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia signing a memorandum of understanding with Virginia to support routes Lynchburg-Knoxville-Chattanooga-Atlanta and Louisville-Atlanta. That notion could change the balance of power in the Congress between the haters and the Amtrak supporters, remembering that many Republicans are Amtrak supporters, just that the haters make more noise. Switching the votes of three or four Senators and 8 or 10 House Members could be worth a couple of hundred million a year.
 
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