A recent interview conducted by New York Daily News transportation reporter Clayton Guse with interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg revealed some shocking information that taxpayers, commuters, elected officials and MTA funding agencies should take note of.
After reading the article “Cut ouf the “s-t,” Transit boss: Who’s doing what is a mystery,” which appeared in the New York Daily News on Monday, July 13, you have to wonder who has been minding the store after learning about the latest New York MTA example of potential waste, fraud and abuse.
After only four months on the job, Ms. Feinberg admitted that her agency has no complete organization chart.
The most basic information explaining the tasks assigned each of 70,000 employees and their supervisor was not available. Any CEO, of a public or private organization, with a budget in the billions, should have these details readily available.
Any human resources department should also have this basic information on file for every employee. How can a supervisor perform an annual performance appraisal without this information?
How can each NYC Transit department head manage their own large numbers of mid-level supervisors and employees? Ms. Feinberg also found she had to deal with multiple lists of consultants under contract to perform work for NYC Transit.
It is a challenge just to determine what work each consultant is performing. How essential is their assigned work to the agency? Why wasn’t more of this work assigned to in-house resources?
Based upon Ms. Feinberg’s shocking revelations, one has to ask if the presidents of Long Island Rail Road, Metro North Rail Road, MTA Capital Construction and MTA Bus have up to date organization charts, complete lists of staff assigned to each supervisor and department head, tasks assigned to each employee and complete understanding of their respective outside consultants program.
Give Ms. Feinberg credit for instituting a freeze on travel out of state and employees’ use of MTA vehicles for private trips and travel to work. I would exempt those engineers visiting out of state manufacturing plants to perform inspection, quality assurance and quality control for any ongoing work.
Has MTA Chairman Pat Foye directed all the other MTA operating agency Presidents to follow these excellent examples by Ms. Feinberg? The same reforms should also apply to several hundred MTA HQ employees.
How could current and previous MTA chairman, board members along with NYC Transit presidents not have known about these critical issues for years?
This scandal is reminiscent of what was found under the LIRR East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal project being managed by MTA Office of Capital Construction 10 years ago.
A simple audit was performed by an accountant who reviewed a budget for train platforms being constructed under Grand Central Terminal. The accountant found that funding was provided under the project budget to pay for 900 workers, but could only find paperwork to justify 700 workers.
No one on the MTA LIRR Eastside Access project could explain what tasks the other unaccounted for 200 workers performed. These 200 potential phantom employees were being paid at $1,000 dollars per day.
They were subsequently removed from the payroll. No one ever determined how long they were on the payroll or how much they were paid. There is no evidence that these lost dollars were ever recovered.
The MTA needs to do a far better job rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. Stop crying that the sky is falling and services will be drastically cut without a second $3.9 billion CARE COVID19 bailout from Washington. The MTA must put its own $17 billion annual operating and $51 billion Five Year 2020-2024 Capital Program in order first.
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, NYC Office of Management and Budget and NYC Independent Budget Office need to investigate these findings. The federal Department of Transportation, state Department of Transportation and MTA’s own inspector general need to follow up.
Other major MTA funding agencies such as the Federal Transit Administration also need to take a close look at these issues. NYC Transit averages spending 70 percent of the $12 billion available in open active FTA grants.
They will be receiving 70 percent of the $1.4 billion in the federal fiscal year 2020 and even more in 2021. FTA has a legal and moral responsibility to ensure NYC Transit and all MTA operating agencies have the technical capacity to avoid having to deal with these critical issues raised by Ms.Feinberg.
Never shy around a camera or microphone, why are Gov. Cuomo and Sen. Schumer so silent on these revelations?
Larry Penner
Larry Penner is a transportation advocate, historian and writer who previously worked 31 years for the Federal Transit Administration Region 2 New York Office.
