ITSA John Collins* selected, Vesuvius spent

ITSA

John Collins* selected, Vesuvius spent

ITS America’s board has chosen a new head, John J. Collins, a longtime Washington transportation policy person with a background in engineering (Princeton) and law (Temple Uni.) Most recently sen-VP for govt affairs at the American Trucking Associations, Collins has previously worked at USDOT and other US agencies. As this edition goes to press his appointment is still to be confirmed formally. (*In our first edition we reported that Thomas Downs, formerly of Amtrak was getting the job, but he dropped out.)

Collins succeeds James Costantino who in recent years gained the middle name Vesuvius for angry explosive eruptions. These produced a revolving door of senior staff. Hal Kassoff, a longtime MD state highway admin was being groomed by the board as a successor, but early last year threw it in after a matter of weeks as Costantino’s deputy. Jonathan Slevin the longest lasting director of communications quit after being told he could henceforth only communicate with the CEO through an aide.

Slevin and Costantino settled legal differences on undisclosed terms early this month just days before the two were to face one another in a million dollar defamation case in court in northern Virginia, in which senior USDOT and Virginia DOT officials were scheduled as witnesses against Costantino. As part of the settlement Costantino retracted the claims and expressed regrets, saying he was misunderstood. We understand ITSA’s insurance policies covered the costs of the settlement.

The defamation suit was brought by Slevin following repeated statements by Costantino to US and VA officials, at a gathering during ITSA’s 1997 annual conference in Washington DC, that he had been forced to fire Slevin for illegal conduct involving federal procurement law, when he had not fired him and was unable to point to anything resembling illegality. The incident followed by about an hour another in which Costantino shouted loudly at one of his marketing consultants at the podium not to answer questions from Slevin. This was at a gathering of about 40 people being given a briefing on an ITSA multi-million dollar “ITS identity” campaign.

Costantino’s staff joked that there was no need to worry that meetings attended by Jim would ever be dull. Meetings reverberated with charges of “lies” etc. Costantino never impressed with much actual knowledge of transportation matters or technologies, needing a full script written by staff, to read from, whenever he spoke. He really earned this reporter’s contempt for his handling of an interview after the abrupt Kassoff departure. There was no mention at any point of anything being off the record. During the hour long interview in his office I took notes. It was all quite cordial even when I asked him the ticklish question of how long he planned to stay at ITSA, but he answered carefully and in detail. However after publication when he read the report on the exhibit floor of the annual conference he immediately denounced my report noisily and with expletives to those around — one of the famed Vesuvial eruptions — and loudly vowed to fire uninvolved staff for what he termed the “leak.” He never spoke to me about the report which he must know was accurate.

ITS America which employs a staff of about 35 in Washington DC is jointly funded by corporate and government members, especially USDOT. It acts both as an advocate and facilitator of high-tech transp technologies. (See TRnl#16 Jun 97 p11, TRnl#17 July 97 p8)