Nathaniel Ford selected as DART CEO finalist
DALLAS - Dallas Area Rapid Transit plans to hire Nathaniel Ford as its next president and CEO.
CEO Finalist Selected
Nathaniel Ford
What's new:
DART board members voted last week to select Ford as the lone finalist for the job but did not publicly release his name.
They made it official on Tuesday following the completion of the employment process. Ford was named DART's new CEO in a 9-4 vote.
Ford is the former head of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, or JTA.
DART selects, doesn't publicly reveal CEO finalist
DART board members have selected a finalist to be their next CEO, but won't reveal who exactly it is until next week.
Finalist Controversy
DART moves forward with CEO pick despite objections
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is moving forward with a new CEO candidate. Five members voted to delay the vote for a month while they vet out the candidate who most recently joined the conversation.
Dig deeper:
The DART board's public and closed session were the cause of much debate.
Last week, several DART board members tried to delay the vote, citing a lack of time to properly vet each candidate. They also argued that Ford, who was one of three finalist candidates, was only brought into the process a few days earlier.
"A candidate bypassed the process and became a finalist on Friday, July 10," Dough Hrbacek, a DART board member, said. "That's two business days ago. Two business days later, we are being asked to vote on that candidate."
DART CEO finalists
Their motion failed after DART Board Chairman Randall Bryant assured the process for vetting candidates has been more thorough than previous CEO searches.
Ford’s tenure in Jacksonville has also been controversial.
In 2024, Florida's Office of the Inspector General looked into concerns about taxpayer funds being spent on extensive travel, including a $10,000 trip to Spain.
FOX 30 in Jacksonville reported that JTA records state half of Ford's time with the JTA has been spent outside the office traveling.
DART CEO Search
The backstory:
DART has been led by David Leninger as its Interim President & CEO since April. The company terminated outgoing CEO Nadine Lee's contract when the two sides could not come to a severance agreement.
Lee, who had led the transportation company since 2021, announced she would not seek to extend her contract in March.
She pointed to recent "political hurdles" for the service when examining her time with DART in an interview with FOX 4's Shaun Rabb.
DART's first female CEO explains decision to leave
Nadine Lee will not seek to renew her contract in September as the CEO of DART. She spoke to FOX 4's Shaun Rabb about the highs and lows of her tenure in an interview on Friday.
"But at the broader level, we've encountered a lot of political hurdles, and that's one of the things that has distracted us from our mission, distracted us from moving faster at improving the quality of our services and things like that.
Hurdles included DART withdrawal elections held in Addison, Highland Park and University Park in May. Addison and University Park voted to stay in DART's service area, while Highland Park voted to leave.
The Source: Information in this story comes from a DART board meeting and past news coverage.