The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit agency in California’s wine country will likely hire the chief financial officer of the Regional Transportation District for a similar position in Northern California.

Heather A. McKillop, who has worked at RTD since 2015 and previously served with the Colorado Department of Revenue and state Department of Transportation, was the unanimous recommendation of a SMART hiring subcommittee, according to The Press Democrat.

“With the announced departure of Erin McGrath, our current Chief Financial Officer, at the end of her contract, we conducted a nationwide recruitment,” read a Nov. 4 memo to the SMART Board of Directors, who will meet on Wednesday to consider hiring McKillop.

If chosen, McKillop would receive a five-year contract beginning on Nov. 30 with an annual base salary of $252,200. According to numbers provided by outgoing RTD Director Natalie Menten, District M, McKillop earns just under $230,000 at RTD.

The SMART system is a 45-mile rail line based around Santa Rosa, with plans to extend it to 70 miles. In the past three years, it carried 1.9 million passengers, The Press Democrat reported. RTD, by contrast, reported 97.6 million riders in 2018.

McKillop’s departure comes as RTD is slated to see its new general manager, Debra Johnson, begin on Nov. 9. Johnson comes to Denver from California, where she is the deputy CEO of Long Beach Transit.