The Metro Board will not discipline its chairman, Jack Evans, this week.
It is now unclear whether the ethics committee made any final recommendation to take any action against Evans after apparently reconsidering on Tuesday, or whether the committee has completed its investigation.
In an extremely unusual move Wednesday, the board canceled its regular committee meeting day Thursday in its entirety.
Though the board has generally cut back on committee meetings and the topics covered in them lately, this is the first time — at least in recent years — that the board has canceled an entire day of prescheduled meetings.
Several board members did not immediately respond to or declined requests for comment, and it was not clear whether there was a majority on the board who could even agree on a joint statement regarding the schedule change and investigation.
Two board members tried to downplay the cancellation of Thursday’s public portion of the meeting as simple logistics — since the public session of the meeting would have been just a few minutes, and could be handled ahead of the May 23 board meeting — but declined to explain the cancellation of the closed session.
The board was due to advance a rail car rehab facility plan Thursday in an open session and then to act on Evans’ ethics issues in the closed door session that had been postponed at the last minute on Tuesday, apparently to give Evans another chance to make his case.
Tuesday’s ethics committee meeting at Metro headquarters went on for hours, and board members declined to comment afterward on why no formal action was taken against Evans.
Evans is under federal investigation over allegations he leveraged his positions on the D.C. Council and at Metro for personal gain. He has already been reprimanded by the D.C. Council, but the council did not remove him from his role on the Metro Board or as chair of the council’s Finance Committee.
The District Dig obtained additional city documents tied to Evans through the Freedom of Information Act outlining the use of Evans’ official emails and staff to line up potential job opportunities using his “knowledge of local government.”
