Who's minding the Metro board?

TO THE LIST of dysfunction at Metro -- broken escalators; deadly accidents and safety mishaps; aging equipment; crumbling platforms; uncertain management; parlous finances -- add one more glaring problem: members of Metro's own board of directors who regard their responsibility to attend board meetings as optional. Put another way, some of the same people whom passengers are relying on to fix a broken agency can't even be bothered to show up.

According to records obtained by the Washington Examiner, about half of the 14 Metro board members have missed meetings in the 18 months that ended July 1 with some regularity, meaning at least a quarter to a fifth of the time. By far the worst offenders are D.C. Council member Michael A. Brown (I-At Large), one of the District's representatives on the board, and Marcell Solomon, one of Maryland's. By their absences, both men make a mockery of the nation's second-busiest transit system and display contempt not only for their colleagues on the board, but also for the system's bus and rail passengers.