Katie Kraft

Katie advises public transit agencies around the country on a variety of regulatory and compliance issues, including public sector procurement, project delivery, Buy America compliance, safety oversight, Title VI, and Section 13(c) labor protection. She is the co-chair of Thompson Coburn's national Public Transit practice.

Clients appreciate Katie's conscientious, thoughtful manner and her ability to calmly handle stressful situations. She focuses on the business goals of her clients when providing guidance and tracks legal developments in the transportation industry to help clients understand their impact on transit operations, projects and activities.

Katie gained new insights on the inner workings of transit agencies while serving as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), operator of the third largest heavy rail transit and sixth largest bus system in the United States. She played a direct role in managing daily legal operations for an agency with a $4.7 billion budget, more than 12,000 employees, and a capital improvement program with 6-year investments totaling $12.3 billion. Katie advised on legal issues in every area of the agency's activities, including procurement, capital project delivery, safety oversight, labor and employment, and ethics. She served as a key member of WMATA's senior management team responding to unprecedented operational, fiscal, health, and safety challenges raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Katie has guided clients in proceedings before federal courts, private arbitrators, and administrative bodies. She represented the State of California in its successful challenge to the U.S. Department of Labor's denial of Section 13(c) certification to California transit agencies based on the State's enactment of pension reform legislation. She also represented a cruise line association in testing local municipal passenger fees against the limits on such fees set by the Tonnage Clause of the U.S. Constitution. She has authored Supreme Court briefs on constitutional issues affecting transportation clients and tackled complex legal issues before a variety of decision makers.