The MBTA did not advertise or put out to bid four new high-ranking hires that could end up costing more than $1 million a year, officials admit.
T General Manager Phillip Eng instead dished out the four new positions to cronies that he worked with at previous jobs in New York.
Dennis Varley, the new “chief of stations” who worked with Eng at the Long Island Railroad, will be making $265,000 a year.
Another Long Island Railroad official, Rod Brooks, the new “senior adviser for capital operations and safety,” will be making $120 an hour. If Brooks works a 40-hour week that comes out to more than $250,000 a year.
Sam Zhou, the new “assistant general manager of engineering and capital,” who comes from the New York Department of Transportation, will also be making $265,000 annually.
Doug Connett, the new “chief of infrastructure” who worked with Eng in New York, will be pulling down a mere $260,000 a year.
Eng must be emulating the UMass system, which routinely hires “assistant vice chancellors” to pad its massive administrative workforce.
“These transit veterans come to the MBTA with decades of proven experience in public transportation with a strong commitment to serving the public,” T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said. “They have a proven track record of tackling challenges similar to those facing the MBTA.”
The trusted colleagues of Eng, all men, will be joining an agency not exactly trusted by the general public.
The T has suffered a series of indignities and accidents over the last several years. Eng was brought in by Gov. Maura Healey to clean up the agency and be a breath of fresh air, but the T continues to suffer problems under his leadership.
But who knew he was going to be padding the payroll with buddies from previous jobs?
And the latest blow to the T came this week with a report by the Massachusetts Inspector General that found the transit agency overpaid a private contract for T “ambassadors” by more than $5 million.
The MBTA overpaid a Tennessee-based company to outsource in-station customer service agents and did not set clear goals to track their performance, Massachusetts’ top government watchdog found in a new report.
In a damning letter to state transportation officials, Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro said contracts should include specific performance metrics to make clear the level of service the vendor is expected to provide. Those metrics should also be coupled with independent audits, periodic reviews, and “secret shoppers.”
“The MBTA employed none of these common tools, so it was difficult to assess if the contract met the goal of improving service. For example, the MBTA did not even attempt to ascertain how Block by Block transit ambassadors were conducting and reporting elevator checks,” Shapiro wrote in the letter. “This simple and seemingly small detail has a potentially huge impact on MBTA riders, particularly those with disabilities.”
