Steve Heminger's self-centered bid to become Bay Area planning czar must be stopped.
The executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, who runs his agency like his personal fiefdom, now wants to take key staff from the Association of Bay Area Governments.
He and MTC board chairman Dave Cortese portray the proposed move as a consolidation. Actually, this is a hostile takeover that would gut ABAG of its employees responsible for land-use and housing planning, and weaken the agency's financial underpinnings.
What's driving Heminger? Under state law, the two agencies must now work cooperatively on regional planning. As Heminger wrote tellingly, "these different organizational styles were more than a nuisance" during recent drafting of the latest joint regional planning document.
Heminger's doesn't like to waste time on the niceties of planning. "MTC is more action-oriented and project-based," he wrote, "while ABAG is more discussion-focused and policy-based."
Well, we've seen how Heminger's action approach has worked out. Bay Area traffic is a mess. Public transit systems are falling apart with billions of dollars of unmet capital needs. 
Read the article HERE