The department said in a statement Saturday that Heath Hall, who had served as the US Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) acting administrator until last month, had resigned “effective immediately.”

The department added it “was unaware of the information that is being reported regarding outside work Heath Hall took on during his time at FRA, but those allegations, if true, are troubling.”

 Politico reported Saturday it had raised questions about whether Hall was simultaneously working as a public relations consultant for a Mississippi sheriff’s department. Heath Hall, who was appointed deputy administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration last June and later named the acting administrator, “has resigned his position at the Department effective immediately,” a Department of Transportation spokeswoman told CNN Saturday. According to Politico, after he became acting chief of an agency with a $1.7 billion dollar budget, he may have also been working as a public relations consultant in Mississippi:

"He subsequently appeared at least twice in local media reports last summer as a sheriff's spokesman in Madison County, Miss., where he has long run a public relations and political consulting firm." Hall’s firm, Strategic Marketing Group, continued to receive payments from July to December of last year, according to local records, despite his statement on an ethics form that his business would “remain dormant during Federal service.”

Hall did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment Saturday. Hall, who started work in June as deputy FRA administrator and served as acting administrator for more than six months, took a leave of absence last month for family reasons. “DOT was unaware of the information that is being reported regarding outside work Heath Hall took on during his time at FRA, but those allegations, if true, are troubling," a DOT spokesperson said in a statement sent to the Washington Examiner. She added, "Heath Hall has resigned his position at the Department effective immediately.”

Since January, the agency's reins have rested in the hands of chief counsel Juan Reyes, a New York attorney with a background primarily in public-private partnerships, who became the acting deputy administrator in January. Since last fall, Democrats, led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have stalled the nomination of railroad executive Ronald Batory with a procedural hold to protest the Trump administration's rejection of a deal to help fund a multi-billion dollar infrastructure project, known as the Gateway Program, which would connect lower Manhattan and New Jersey with a rail tunnel underneath the Hudson River.
Heath Hall, the acting Federal Railroad Administration chief, resigns "effective immediately" over a Politico report that he has a second job in Madison County, Mississippi.