Some Thoughts On the Agency Review Teams

The Agency Review Working Groups that Obama announced last week are important for a couple of reasons. 1) Especially for more under-the-radar agencies, the appointments provide a good preview of potential appointees to key positions. 2) The appointments provide some sense of how Obama sees the agencies, and what he knows, or doesn't know, about them. 3) They provide some sense of who Obama thinks he owes, and who he values.

Take the Department of Transportation Review Leads, Mort Downey, Jane Garvey, and Michael Huerta. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which for a small union is relatively tight with Obama (one of his first acts as a Senator was to introduce the "FAA Fair Labor Management Dispute Resolution Act of 2006," which would have restored the controllers' right to binding arbitration in contract disputes), is super-happy about that list. When Garvey was FAA administrator, she negotiated a contract the controllers consider the gold standard. And they're happy about Downey, too:

"There’s all sorts of people who are in there who we know and who know us. Mort Downey, beyond being a high-ranking official, was a former judge for our top controller of the year award," NATCA spokesman Doug Church told me yesterday. "He knows a thing or two about what we do for a living."