12/8/2006 Changing Reins
BNSF promotes Moreland to public affairs EVP, hires Nober to succeed Moreland in law department
Yesterday, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. announced it named Jeff Moreland executive vice president, public affairs and Roger Nober, EVP, law and secretary. The new appointments take effect Jan. 1. Both men will report to BNSF Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Matt Rose.
Since 1995, Moreland has headed BNSF’s law department. Now, he will be responsible for federal and state government relations, corporate communications and economic regulatory policy.
From November 2002 to December 2005, Nober served as chairman of the Surface Transportation Board. For the past year, he has worked as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of law firm Steptoe & Johnson L.L.P., focusing primarily on transportation law and legislative matters. He also has served as counselor to the deputy secretary of transportation and chief counsel for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Does this smell really foul to anyone else? Nober leaves chairmanship of the STB, the highest anti-trust regulator in the nation for rail carriers, goes to a private firm for a matter of months and is then hired by one of the largest carriers that he was to have overseen. Makes one wonder what sort of relationship may have existed while still holding office at STB. Just smells like so much moldering carp to me.
Haven’t been around very long; have you?
Who Uncle Pete had on the payroll a couple of ICC/STB iterations back, and before that IC and SOU?
You have to play the game, and the damn government sets the rules, so you have to play by government rules.
The regulators will kill an enterprise in a heart beat without a second though because they know not what they do. They’ll never understand the devistation they create.
So you have to keep 'em off your back. It’s like dealing with sewage, unpleasent but neccessary.
Hiring an “insider” is a good way to deal with this crap. It is unfortunate, but neccessary.
Former ICC Chairman Darius Gaskins left and became president of the Burlington Northern. Nobody batted an eyelash that the single most important decision of his ICC tenure favored the BN.
At ICC, Gaskins generated the bizarre analysis that because the NewMil proposal for preserving a transcontinental Milwaukee Road predicted a rate of return .4% less than the ICC’s annual evaluation of revenue adequacy for railroads – of which only two railroads met that year – the reorganization proposal should be denied.
Killed the Milwaukee but was glad to then take the top job at its main competitor – which ironically was not only not revenue adequate by ICC standards, it was substantially less so than the projected reorganized transcontinental Milwaukee Road.
For all the criticism of regulation – these regulatory agencies were industry controlled, lock, stock and barrel.
Seems that one could perhaps surmise from this action by BNSF that BNSF is contemplating something big that would fall under the pervue of the STB and wants to know how STB would think about such things.
That or perhaps just some outright, good old political patronage for the STB having looked the other way on shipper complaints (coal, grain, et. al.)
This revolving door between regulatory agencies and industry has been going on for decades. It is not just the STB but all of the regulatory agencies. It has been recognized for many years as a root conflict on interest problem. However, none of the Congress’, controlled by the Democrats or Republicans, have chosen do anything to correct the problem. One way to fix the problem is getting rid on as many regulations as possible. Government that governs least governs best.