The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio is heartbreaking and tragic.
It’s been a month since a Norfolk Southern train derailed and spilled 1.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the community, affecting 4,700 residents.
The contrast in the responses of the Biden administration and former President Donald Trump was startling. Biden has been busy traveling to Ukraine to offer billions in foreign aid, and US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has avoided traveling to East Palestine for weeks. Meanwhile, Trump immediately met with East Palestinian Mayor Trent Conaway, paid for supplies and thousands of bottles of water for distribution, and took gigantic teams of first responders to lunch at a local McDonald’s.
Residents of East Palestine were probably not impressed that Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Md.) last month shared his interest in traveling to Hollywood as a fundraiser. Biden hasn’t made a visit yet, but he has promised “at some point,” whatever that means.
Buttigieg finally bowed to intense scrutiny and visited East Palestine, but only as part of a calculated political move aimed at wrongfully derailing the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.
To deflect criticism, Buttigieg blames the Trump administration for repealing a rule requiring electronically controlled air brakes (ECP) on all trains carrying flammable cargo. The change came after a congressional watchdog report found that the Obama administration implemented the rule without a proper cost-benefit analysis.
Trump-hating experts echoed Buttigieg’s statement. There is just one problem, however: even if the ECP rule had remained in place, the East Palestine train did not have enough flammable freight cars to apply the rule. Even the fact-checkers at the Washington Post. he admitted“None of the regulatory changes made at this point under the Trump administration can be considered a cause of the accident.”
Buttigieg continued his partisan mudslinging and aimed fire at Senators J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), noting that many Republicans support greater apply of automated track safety inspections. There were Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) pilot programs that showed that automated inspections discovered more problems than visual inspectors. The hope was to enable automation to free inspectors from examining signals and other elements of train travel that could not be checked by automation. This would be particularly helpful as there has been a shortage of rail workers since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has put an end to these pilot programs.
Buttigieg’s focus on Republican regulatory changes is particularly off-putting because there is no indication that any inspections (human or automated) for track defects would support East Palestine. The truth is that in the past, trains were many times safer than trucks when transporting hazardous materials. Although trucks to wear caused twice as many risky loads as trucks 16 times more deaths since 1975. There have been no fatalities from trains carrying risky goods in the last decade. These statistics don’t support the people of East Palestine, but neither does Buttigieg’s economical political theater.
Policymakers face the tough task of managing a wide-ranging agenda and examining regulatory changes while avoiding bankruptcy of the rail industry. What is clear, however, is the policy recommendations presented by Secretary Buttigieg last month – and signed by several Republicans in legislation introduced this week – will not make trains safer. Instead of helping Ohioans and communities that may be affected by future accidents, the Secretary’s so-called solutions are merely a repackaging of long-term, progressive priorities for a special interest particularly close to this administration: organized labor.
My prayers are with the East Palestinian community and all those affected by this derailment deserve fair compensation. It is time to end the ugly policies and political opportunism of the Biden administration and take a stand with East Palestine.
Ken Blackwell is the former mayor of Cincinnati, treasurer and secretary of state of Ohio. He is an advisor to the Family Research Council in Washington, DC
