He’s a Man on the Move
At 42, Rodney Earl Slater already has a personal resume with mythical overtones.
The new secretary of transportation grew up in small-town Arkansas and was picking cotton at 6 to buy his first vehicle--a $29.95 red Schwinn bicycle. Today at a pivotal moment, as head of the 100,000-employee Department of Transportation, he directs how the nation moves by land, sea and air.
Big challenges are second nature to President Clinton’s longtime friend. Slater grew up in public housing in Marianna, Ark., and attended segregated schools until the 10th grade. A running back on his college football team, he got to the national quarterfinals not in sports but in “interpretation of prose” for the forensics team.
Nowadays, he emphasizes the importance of jobs, especially to the minority community and the driving force of transportation to create them. And, in the age of the Internet, he knows he must make bread-and-butter transit issues somehow glitzy or romantic.
So, he’s starting the Garrett Morgan Program, named after the African American who invented the traffic light (and thus the idea of a traffic control system), to get young people fired up about careers in transportation. (“It’s the best paying industry in the U.S., it’s an exciting industry.”) He envisions men and women from the Coast Guard (“in their beautiful uniforms”) describing search-and-rescue missions or daring pilots visiting classrooms to ignite young imaginations.
In his new job, Slater faces an array of policy issues including modernizing the aviation system, keeping Amtrak running, and dealing with increased highway fatalities, the redesign of auto air bags, disputes among states about the distribution of transportation funding and the pending reauthorization of a massive, multiyear highway-spending bill. There are also important local feuds around the country, including funding for L.A.’s troubled subway project. At the same time, he must have an overview of the nation’s role as part of a global network of moving people and goods.
Slater, who was tapped by the president in 1993 to head the 3,500-employee Federal Highway Administration, relishes the opportunity. In the classical style he honed in college, he speaks passionately of the symbolism of America’s roadways. “I think one of the real opportunities for DOT is putting together an effective architectural framework for transportation decision-making in the 21st century,” he declared to a luncheon audience on a recent trip to Los Angeles.
A newcomer to Washington four years ago (he had been chairman of the Arkansas State Highway Commission), he had to pick his way through the political minefield of deciding which roads would be made part of the coveted 160,000-mile National Highway System and thereby eligible for funds.
“He has built bridges both of steel and goodwill to bring people closer together,” said Clinton in nominating Slater to replace Federico Pen~a, who moved to the Energy Department. His nomination sailed through the Senate unanimously, buoyed by praise from Democrats and Republicans for his ability to work with Congress.
He has drawn scorching criticism from consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who has accused him of being a tool of the trucking and auto industries, especially for not being able to preserve the 55 mph speed limit. But he generally gets good marks for breaking out of the auto-as-everything mold during his tenure as highway administrator.
“It’s been fun to watch him grow,” said Hank Dittmar, executive director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which focuses on alternatives such as mass transit and bicycle trails. Dittmar’s nonprofit coalition was initially skeptical of the idea of a highway commissioner from rural Arkansas, he said.
“Most of those agencies in the South have never met a road that couldn’t be wider. While I think he continues to be an advocate for bringing transit to rural communities, he understands that in urban areas we have to look at other alternatives.”
“Other alternatives” are the emerging buzzwords within the bureaucracy. In 1991, Congress passed the watershed Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). Pronounced “ice tea,” the awkwardly named legislation loosened up transportation funding policy, which had focused since World War II on the interstate system, making it more responsive to the environment and specific community needs for all kinds of transportation. “It really marked the end of the interstate era,” Dittmar said.
The new look was a good fit for Slater. Transportation, he likes to say, “is about more than concrete, asphalt and steel. It’s about people--how they get to work, how they visit friends. It’s about how they pursue happiness.” The law is due to expire in October and the stakes on its reauthorization are large.
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Even in casual conversation Slater is an eloquent speaker, preferring finely constructed sentences to sound bites and calling on literary quotations that range from Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius to poet James Weldon Johnson. “It goes back to forensics,” he explained.
As a student at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, known for its oratory program, he was recruited by forensics coach Dennis Beagen. “I heard him as a sophomore in a public speaking course,” Beagen said last week, “and was taken by his presence, his eloquence and his use of imagery--everything that makes for a public speaker. He had a wonderful communicative style, not preachy, but personal. I thought that he had probably spent many hours in a church listening to a gifted minister.”
Indeed, church was an important influence. At 5 or 6, Slater was memorizing Bible Scriptures and reciting them on a radio broadcast from Bethlehem Baptist Church. The family stress on religion was important, Slater said, though he didn’t keep up the Bible recitations. “I was like every teenager, but we did believe in doing those things that would bring honor to the family. That was very important.”
Slater’s mother, Velma Slater, was not married when he was born and her son never knew his father. She soon married Earl Brewer, a mechanic whom Slater considers his father. Slater has four half-siblings.
He was offered a track scholarship to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. But Slater, who still remembers sitting with his little sisters on their front porch and guessing what kind of car would round the curve next, chose Eastern Michigan to “have a chance to get away and be on my own,” before returning to Fayetteville for law school.
In 1982 he left a job in the state attorney general’s office to work on Clinton’s 1982 campaign to regain the governor’s seat, and has worked for him since.
Slater and his wife, Cassandra Wilkins-Slater, who is senior advisor to the Social Security commissioner, have a daughter, Bridgette, 4. They’ve bought a house in Silver Spring (“still in the Beltway,” he hastened to add), and they attend Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, though their membership is still held at Bethel AME in Little Rock.
Despite his busy schedule, Slater’s family finds time to enjoy living in the capital, he said. “Saturday is always Bridgette’s. We have ‘kindermusic,’ we have ballet, we have gymnastics and soccer. And we’ll all get out to some of the museums and an occasional play.” The former athlete stays trim with a treadmill and occasional jogging.
His first trip to Washington was as a senior in college for the National Forensics Tournament, but his wife has known the city much longer. “My wife’s father [the late Arkansas state Rep. Henry Wilkins, who originally introduced Slater to Clinton] was a political science and history professor and they came here often. She’s showing me places that are wonderful.”
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Slater hardly paused during his 18-hour day in Los Angeles. Traveling in a modest entourage of a Chevrolet Astro sedan and Caprice van, provided by the CHP, he breakfasted with Mayor Richard Riordan and met with Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the California Legislative Black Caucus and the Assembly Transportation Committee.
He talked to about 150 Federal Aviation Administration employees at their Hawthorne regional headquarters and stopped by Community Build on South Vermont Avenue, where he smoothly demonstrated the correct way to buckle a squirming toddler into a car seat and gave away five car seats to families. He also tucked in a private reception at the City Club and a stop at See’s Candies to buy a chocolate Easter bunny for Bridgette.
Like his boss, Slater is an extrovert. “He has a very personal style in that he makes an effort, beyond most, to reach out and make sure that people are kept in touch with him,” said staffer Bill Schulz.
At lunch with the editorial board of The Times, the secretary made a pitch for the successor program to ISTEA. The administration’s proposal is another mouthful, the National Economic Crossroads Transportation Efficiency Act or NEXTEA, known as “Next Tea.”
Slater ticked off its selling points: more money for the nation’s core highway programs, a stronger emphasis on safety, significant increases in funding for environmental programs and local incentives to provide job training for welfare recipients on federal construction projects.
As federal highway administrator, Slater came to California both to dedicate new freeways and to help rebuild earthquake-damaged ones. As transportation secretary, he has widened his view, as he envisions a global world of gateway ports and open skies providing mass transportation. California, with its four busy seaports, several major airports and its proximity to the Pacific Rim and Mexico, is pivotal in this scenario, he told the luncheon guests.
Asked about consumer group charges that he had shortchanged auto safety issues, he said some of the criticism was fair and he took responsibility. “We are seeing greater aggressive driving and seat-belt usage has plateaued,” he said, listing several new safety programs. “It’s appropriate to ask, where do we go from here?”
The last event of his day was a keynote address to the Greater Los Angeles African American Chamber of Commerce Economic Awards black-tie dinner downtown. He emphasized progress in the black community and the importance of jobs and links to business. “African American employment is rising,” he said, “income is rising, college-going rate is rising, new businesses are proving that African Americans can lead as well as follow, can teach as well as be taught, can employ as well as be employed.”
Slater was introduced by Riordan who recalled that, as highway administrator in 1994 “he was on the ground literally hours after the Northridge earthquake occurred, and he stayed. He was the catalyst who got the bridges and the roads repaired.” Slater, in turn, saluted the recuperative powers of Los Angeles after recession and civil strife--”Five years ago I traveled here and visited a different city”--and urged the crowd of 400 to “be engaged in those things that lift people up rather than tear them down.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
U.S. Department of Transportation
Budget: $38.4 billion
Number of Employees: 100,000
The department includes:
* Coast Guard
* Federal Aviation Administration
* Federal Highway Administration
* Federal Railroad Administration
* National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
* Federal Transit Administration
* Maritime Administration
* St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation
* Research and Special Programs Administration
* Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Source: Department of Transportation
