In 1987 and 1988, Schiavo, then known as Mary Sterling, served as a White House Fellow and handled Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests as a special assistant to then US Attorney General Edwin Meese.
[2] In 1990 President of the United States George H. W. Bush appointed Schiavo as the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
In Flying Blind, Schiavo describes how the FAA uses a formula ascribing specific monetary value to human lives, and how the agency allows numbers to decide whether the cost of extra safety is worth the additional expense (e.g., if equipping an airline fleet with smoke detectors would cost $100 million, but would only save 10 lives each worth $1 million, then the expense is ruled out).
She writes, "I can't remember when I started calling these men the 'Kidney Stone Administrators', but I do know that it became apparent to me early on that they were tolerated only because everyone at the FAA knew it was merely time before they would pass.
"[4] One reviewer was critical of the book, because he felt that "[h]er fundamental mistake is to argue that the FAA should pursue safety literally at all cost.
"[5] Schiavo criticized the FAA for assigning monetary values to human lives; however laws requiring cost-benefit analyses (like the Regulatory Flexibility Act) require the FAA to assign monetary values to all potential losses and to analyze the cost to the public if a proposed rule is implemented and the cost if the rule is not implemented.
After the Secretary of Transportation insisted that ValuJet was safe, Schiavo produced contrary evidence from government files.
Schiavo believed the FAA wanted ValuJet to survive, leading it to take a lax view of overseeing and enforcing rules.
After completing the professor in residence appointment in Public Policy, she accepted the McConnell Aviation Chair, teaching from 1998 to 2002.