By Frank N. Wilner, Capitol Hill Contributing Editor, Railway Age Magazine; April 16, 2019
LEGISLATIVE REPORT, APRIL 2019 – Knock, knock. Who’s there? If at the door are those laboring in official Washington, the answer is, “many new faces”—new congressional committee chairs, regulators, association chiefs, lobbyists and labor negotiators. Does not danger dwell where unfamiliarity and uncertainty lurk?
History may provide solace. “When you’re fighting the railroads, they’re very strong and they seldom lose,” says one of the railroads’ most resolute adversaries, attorney Robert G. Szabo, whose Consumers United for Rail Equity coalition once came within a single Commerce Committee vote of sending to the Senate floor a referendum on whether to retain for railroads partial economic deregulation.