Marin County
Supervisor Kinsey to Head Regional Transportation Agency
Marin County Supervisor Steve
Kinsey has been elected chair of the Metropolitan Transportation
Commission (MTC) by his fellow commissioners at a regularly
scheduled meeting of the 19-member policy board. Elected to serve as
vice chair of MTC was Jon Rubin, who represents the mayor of San
Francisco on the Commission. Each will serve a two-year term.
Outlining
his goals for the next two years, Kinsey said, "I want to build
on MTC’s recent efforts to improve our public outreach. We have
done a good job and we can continue to do a better job so that all
voices are heard as we make the important policy choices that come
before the Commission."
Referring to continued legal
wrangling over Bay Area air quality efforts, Kinsey commented,
"A personal ambition for me would be to rebuild a level of
respect with our critics so we can leave behind the era of
litigation and move to a higher plane where we can find our common
ground on a number of shared issues." Other priorities
identified by Kinsey include advocating for reauthorization of the
federal transportation funding program, improving transit
connectivity around the Bay Area with the TransLink® smart card,
and other programs, using performance measures as a guide for policy
decisions, and pursuing a "smart growth" strategy that
strengthens the link between transportation and land use.
Kinsey,
who represents Marin County on the Commission, was appointed to MTC
in 1998 and has served as vice chair since 2001. The 50-year-old
West Marin resident was elected to the Marin County Board of
Supervisors in November 1996. Prior to that, he was a member of the
Marin Conservation League board and chair of the Marin Conservation
League Water Committee. Kinsey has also served on the Marin
Municipal Water District Ad Hoc Water Supply Committee and in 1995
was co-chair of the "Yes on Measure C" committee, which
led a successful effort to pass a $2.6 million school bond measure.
Kinsey is the first Marin County
commissioner to be named MTC chair. He brings strong transportation
and land-use planning credentials to the position, playing a
leadership role on the Regional Agencies Steering Committee guiding
the Smart Growth Strategy/Regional Livability Footprint Project for
MTC, the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Bay Area Air
Quality Management District, the Bay Conservation and Development
Commission, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board. He also
has served as chair of the Marin County Congestion Management Agency
and the county’s Fair Housing Committee, president of the Marin
Emergency Radio Authority, and as a member of the Marin County
Housing Authority, the Marin County Open Space District, the Marin
County Redevelopment Agency, and the Marin County Transit District.
Kinsey replaces San Pablo mayor
Sharon Brown as MTC Chair. Brown, who had represented the cities of
Contra Costa County on the sMTC since 1993, has been succeeded on
the Commission by Richmond mayor Irma J. Anderson. Other newly
appointed commissioners include Tom Azumbrado, who represents the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and serves as
director of project management in HUD’s Office of Multifamily
Housing; and Caltrans District 4 Director Bijan Sartipi, who
represents the state Business, Housing and Transportation Agency.
Members are appointed or re-appointed to the 19-member governing
board of MTC every four years.
Rubin, vice-president and creative director for
Bay Relations Inc., a Daly City public relations firm, has been an
MTC commissioner since 1995, when he was appointed by former San
Francisco mayor Frank Jordan.