Editor,

Island Transit’s current board oversight challenges may have many causes, but the greatest may not be the fault of the current Island Transit Board at all.

According to state code spelling out certain guidelines for public transportation benefit area boards, these boards: “… shall consist of elected officials selected by and serving at the pleasure of the governing bodies of component cities within the area and the county legislative authority of each county within the area.”

This state requirement, that transit board members must have been elected to other public offices, may simply be asking too much of those responsible for providing policy direction and legislative support for these sorts of complex systems.

Local elected officials — city and county — are, first and foremost, responsible to the constituents in their respective jurisdictions.

To meet that obligation, they not only serve on their city councils or county commissions, but also on numerous committees and boards related to those primary duties.

Serving on Island Transit’s governing board may unreasonably divide the attention of these otherwise attentive and professional elected officials.

If so, this may go a long way to explaining how Island Transit apparently went so long without closer attention and more direct scrutiny from its own governing board of elected officials.

In the event this is the case, the good news is that this situation is not to any degree uncorrectable.

The bad news is that it will take a change of state law to adequately address it.

As demonstrated, state law requires that these board members be elected officials of component jurisdictions.

A simple change of one word in this law can and, I think, should solve this dilemma and give the public a lot more latitude in who serves them on these types of boards.

If we change the excerpted portion of the statute to read “may” rather than “shall,” transit boards could then, where desired, consist of appointed, rather than elected, public officials.

Once accomplished, the elected officials currently serving on the Island Transit Board could take a step back from direct oversight of Island Transit and, instead, appoint a commissioned board whose members would have that oversight as their sole responsibility.

The elected officials — now sitting on a regional transit committee, rather than the board — would still provide legislative support but would delegate the aspects of system oversight and direction to the board members they appoint.

The appointed board members would still be public officials, would still take oaths of office and have to abide by the same ethical standards all public officials should, but they would be able to devote all of their attention to Island Transit, rather than just a part of that, as but one of numerous other boards and committees on which they serve.

A simple change in state law in this regard could help give us the latitude we need to provide the sort of governing oversight which Island Transit both needs and deserves.

John Greet

Oak Harbor