California high-speed rail Jerry Brown appointee is out in big leadership shakeup
Joe Hedges, who for the past three years has wrestled to keep California’s embattled bullet-train project on track as chief operating officer of the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority, is gone from the agency.
The abrupt change in one of the top executive posts at the authority was confirmed by an agency spokesperson Tuesday, a day after Hedges’ departure.
“Monday was Chief Operating Officer Joe Hedges’ last day with the California High-Speed Rail Authority,” said Melissa Figueroa, the authority’s chief of strategic communications. “Until a permanent replacement is appointed by the governor, CEO Brian Kelly is making necessary personnel moves internally to ensure continued progress on construction in the Central Valley.”
Hedges, 60, was appointed to the post by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in February 2018. He previously worked at the Washington State Department of Transportation, where he was an administrator for the late stages of a $2.1 billion, four-lane highway tunnel bypassing downtown Seattle, according to The Seattle Times.
According to Brown’s 2018 announcement of the appointment, Hedges came to California with more than 35 years of construction, engineering and management experience in both the private and public sectors. He served in the U.S. Navy’s Corps of Civil Engineers for 24 years, retiring as a captain in 2008.
His starting salary with the state rail authority was $337,008 per year.
As a political appointee of Brown, Hedges continued to serve until Monday at the pleasure of Gov. Gavin Newsom. No further details about the change were immediately available, but the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that Hedges’ departure came following an investigation by the authority board and an outside law firm over concerns raised in an anonymous letter from an authority employee involving payments to contractors related to change orders and delays.
During his tenure, Hedges and other agency leaders grappled with issues that threatened to derail the project, including the slow pace of acquiring the property needed for the rail line through the San Joaquin Valley, rising costs and schedule delays. He was vocal about maintaining a focus on work that was directly related to construction progress and “doing our jobs,” he told The Bee in a 2018 interview.
“We want to do stuff that is contributory. We want to be deliberate in our moves,” Hedges said at that time. “We’re not fully funded, so these moves have to be very strategic. … Let’s stop chasing shiny ideas. Let’s make prudent decisions when we need to make them.”
Tom Richards of Fresno, chairman of the rail authority’s board of directors, praised Hedges’ work as part of the agency’s leadership team under chief executive officer Brian Kelly.
“I think we would all agree that he made strong contributions to the high-speed rail authority,” Richards told The Bee on Tuesday. “I think the end product is what we’re seeing now: an increase in the velocity of construction projects, ramping up delivery of right of way, and (completing) third-party agreements” with utility companies, other railroads, and city and county government agencies.
“Joe certainly played a role in where we are today,” Richards added.
The first construction contract for work in the central San Joaquin Valley, a stretch of the route from Madera to the south end of Fresno, was awarded in 2013. Eight years later, the work has yet to be done, and the agency was still more than 150 properties short of the 1,066 pieces of land it needs for that construction segment, Hedges reported to the authority’s board this month.
Over the three construction segments now in progress in Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties, a total of almost 2,300 land parcels are required for the project; so far, the rail authority still has 445 more pieces of property to acquire, or almost 20% of what’s needed.
The rail authority offered no timeline about when a replacement for Hedges may be hired.
This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 2:24 PM.
