Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester said that he and the Biden administration are working toward a resolution to ensure the Amtrak board of directors is geographically representative of the U.S., but he gave no indication what the resolution could be.
Tester made his comment Wednesday at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing with three of President Joe Biden’s six nominees for the Amtrak board. Tester and a handful of Republicans have vowed to block the nominees unless the administration complied with a legal requirement that no more than four be from states on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
Five of the six nominees hail from states within the corridor: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island or the District of Columbia. Three of them — Joel Matthew Szabat, Anthony Rosario Coscia and Christopher Koos — testified Wednesday. Koos, from Illinois, is the only nominee from outside of the corridor. Rosario is from New Jersey and Szabat is from Maryland.
