Qatar Supports the Washington Metro

The Washington Capitals ice hockey team, which plays its home games in downtown Washington, is in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The games go long enough that spectators can’t reliably take DC’s Metro rail transit home, as the trains stop running at 11:30 pm on Monday through Thursday.

This wasn’t a problem in the first two games of a best four-out-of-seven series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, as those games were played in Tampa. In the third game, Metro persuaded Exelon, which owns the local electric company, to donate $100,000 to keep the trains running for an extra hour.

For last night’s game 6, Metro somehow twisted Uber’s figurative arm into contributing $100,000 to keeping the trains running. It seems strange that Uber would give money to its competitor unless it hopes to get some political favors in exchange.

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The donation from Qatar was particularly questionable because Metro is not allowed to accept money from foreign governments. Not a problem: Metro chair Jack Evans (who is also on the DC city council) arranged for Qatar to donate $100,000 to the Downtown DC Business Improvement District, which in turn donated $100,000 to Metro. This naturally has people wondering what political favors Qatar hopes to get from this deal as well as what other laws Metro is willing to circumvent in order to keep its doors open.

Update: The Capitals won game 6, so the series goes to game 7. But the final game will be played in Tampa, where no one is being asked to bribe donate to the transit agency to keep the buses running after the game.