President Biden nominates former Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown nominated to NTSB

Former Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown has been picked to fill a seat on the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal panel that reviews transportation disasters for ways to improve safety.

President Joe Biden nominated Brown on Wednesday, but the choice will still need confirmation by the U.S. Senate before he’s sworn into a term expiring Dec. 31, 2026.

Brown, a Democrat who led City Hall from 2011 to 2015 and held positions in former President Bill Clinton's administration, was named to fill a role on the five-person board that’s been open for more than a year.

He didn’t return messages left Wednesday by voicemail and text.

Brown will take the seat formerly held by Robert L. Sumwalt, who had been both chairman and vice-chair during a 15-year NTSB tenure that ended in June 2021.

Photos: Former Mayor Alvin Brown, a look back at Jacksonville's first black mayor

Meet the candidate: Mayor Alvin Brown

The NTSB investigates every civil aviation accident in the country and studies accidents it considers significant involving highways, water transportation, railroads or pipelines.

Examples involving Northeast Florida have included the March death of a pilot whose small plane crashed in a marsh near St. Augustine; the 2018 death of an Amtrak conductor from Orange Park after his train collided with a CSX freight train parked on a South Carolina rail siding; and the 2015 sinking of the cargo ship El Faro, whose 33 people on board all died in a hurricane.

Investigators among the hundreds of agency employees produce minutely detailed reports designed to check the ways that people, equipment and policies or practices contributed to disasters and can be made safer.  

One board member commonly travels to an accident site as soon as the agency starts an investigation, which can sometimes take two years or more to complete. Board members sometimes become steeped in practices of different modes of transportation. Sumwalt, after leaving the NTSB, became the director of a safety center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.