Tracy Wood continues her anti-HSR reporting in the online Voice of OC website with an article about a meeting between CHSRA Chair Curt Pringle and State Senators Alan Lowenthal and Bob Huff:

Curt Pringle, in his capacity as chairman of California’s High Speed Rail Authority, sat down last week with two of the state’s most influential legislators on transportation issues and went through what can be best described as an intervention.

Notice the framing Wood uses here. Instead of casting this as a “confidence-building” meeting or a “clear the air” meeting or a “constructive” meeting, she frames it as some kind of dramatic “intervention” on the part of the chair (Lowenthal) and vice-chair (Huff) of the Senate Transportation Committee. So at least we know going into the article not to expect any pretense of journalistic neutrality from Wood.

Pringle and the lawmakers — Democratic Sen. Alan Lowenthal, chairman of the Senate’s Transportion and Housing Committee and Republican Sen. Bob Huff, the committee’s vice chairman — had a frank discussion about the mismanagement and lack of accountability that has plagued the state’s $42 billion high-speed rail project.

Huff said Pringle gave them a “firm commitment” that the rail authority will “clean up their own house.”

I don’t see this as an “intervention.” Wood doesn’t say who asked for the meeting, but I would not be surprised if it were Pringle, wanting to show the Senate that he takes these criticisms seriously and plans to make whatever changes are needed to ensure the project survives and thrives.

An “intervention,” for those who aren’t familiar, is where family and friends sit down with a loved one and force them to seek help for an addiction or other serious problem. So Wood is basically describing the CHSRA as a drunk or a drug abuser.

After Wood describes the Big Dig and an unnamed 1980s corruption case, both mentioned so that Wood could insinuate that the CHSRA is facing similar problems without having to actually explain it (because they’re not), she does include a buried but very important quote from Senator Huff that directly challenges Wood’s spin on this meeting:

“The audit findings were just absolutely outrageous,” added Lowenthal. But, “both Senator Huff and myself are very optimistic we’ve really turned the corner.”

However, he added, “we’re not backing off. We’re not going to micromanage and tell them how to do it, but they have to set bench marks and meet those bench marks.”

In other words, despite Wood’s attempt to paint this meeting and this situation as doom and gloom, the Senate isn’t playing along with her framing.

Wood isn’t done, and after discussing the issue of whether the Authority should be restructured (a subject on which I’m agnostic), she then insinuates that the new CEO, Roelof van Ark, has irreparable conflict of interest issues:

Lowenthal said van Ark’s professional credentials are great, but he’s worried the new CEO may be seen by potential equipment suppliers as a “stalking horse” for the French. Strong efforts, Lowenthal said, need to be made to reassure all bidders that they will have a fair shot….

After the rail authority named van Ark as its next chief executive, Lowanthal said they met and he warned him he must make it clear to everyone that just because he was trying to sell French equipment to the Florida rail system and talked of selling it to California, everyone will have a fair chance.

Van Ark, 58, was president of the French company Alstom Transportation Inc. He lives in New York, but is South African and has worked in many parts of the world. His salary will be $375,000.

Senator Lowenthal, who has himself been critical of the HSR project, is also refusing to play along with Wood’s script. He seems to be letting van Ark know that he should move quickly to dispel any conflict of interest concerns, which strike me as overblown.

Further, it’s difficult to find anyone qualified to oversee this high speed rail project who hasn’t had involvement with or even worked for one of the other countries or companies bidding on the California system. If we want expertise – which should be the priority – then that means finding someone with past ties. But van Ark, like any other such person, is a professional and will know how to separate his past employers from his new responsibility to treat the various bidders neutrally and in the public interest.

Finally, if you look at the image used to illustrate the article, it caps off the anti-HSR nature of the article.

So if the Lowenthal/Huff/Pringle meeting wasn’t an “intervention,” why mention this at all? Because it suggests the ongoing need for a true “intervention” – with the media in particular, and their addiction to anti-HSR reporting.

Wood’s article illustrates a lack of familiarity with how HSR works, how the Authority works. It’s all framed with the assumption that government projects are inherently flawed and wasteful, and she fits the facts to that thesis. In short, she seems addicted to criticizing HSR and can’t envision it being a success. There’s always a problem to report on, never anything positive to say.

Not all HSR articles or reporters are like that, thankfully. But it happens often enough to where it seems useful for more of them to actually do what the SF Chronicle’s Michael Cabanatuan did – travel abroad to see how HSR actually works.

As to the Legislature, they desperately need an intervention – but not over HSR. Instead, as even many legislators themselves will tell you, the Legislature has failed to address the state’s economic and fiscal crisis. Whatever problems exist at the Authority, they pale in comparison to the Legislature, which itself needs restructuring and itself has failed to properly fund the services our state needs. That needs to be kept in mind anytime the Legislature lectures the Authority.

Note: The SF Chronicle article on the Shinkansen is now on the website – I’ll have more about that tomorrow, so let’s hold off on discussing it until then.