According to the November issue of Trains Magazine (not on the web afaik):
[T]wo key players …on the Amtrak board, Federal Railroad Administrator Joe Szabo and Amtrak president Joseph Boardman, cannot have any contact or even be in the same room together for one year due to federal ethics rules, because Boardman was the previous FRA administrator.
Couldn’t they just hire a lobbyist, or maybe get one of BHO’s Chicago buddies, to contrive a way around the ethics laws?