Metro Spending Often Veers From Core Transit Mission

In the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, the agency incurred $7.5 million in unexpected overtime costs, senior Metro manager Jim Hughes said. Overtime has a significant impact on the agency's long-term costs because pensions are based on the total number of hours worked. As a result, some retirees get pension checks bigger than the base pay they received while working. More than a quarter of Metro workers will be eligible to retire in the next few years.

Kauffman, the board chairman, called the number of workers making more than $100,000 "unconscionable." Metro managers said they don't want to cap overtime because it provides scheduling flexibility, but they said they are exploring other ways to reduce it and trying to fill vacant positions more quickly.

Some departments are suffering from chronic vacancies. The division that repairs trains, for example, is 57 mechanics short, Metro managers said. But agency records show that others are flush. The radio division, for instance, was so bloated that its 24 employees didn't have enough to do, according to an audit in late 2003.

The audit found that technicians who repair and maintain radio equipment were reporting to work late, taking extended lunch breaks, leaving early and hiding their inactivity by falsifying time and attendance sheets.

Some of those workers would hop into a Metro truck and head to Yum's Chinese restaurant, stopping to chat up the prostitutes who worked the streets nearby, the audit found. Others filled empty hours by sleeping in Metro vehicles or in backrooms, waking up in time to punch out.

"Almost without exception, those interviewed believed that part of the problem stems from an excess" of employees, the audit found. Since then, Metro has added two positions to the division to improve oversight, spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said.

In other cases, Metro has created new jobs for managers whose previous performance had been criticized by agency officials.

Bea Hicks was the chief operating officer for rail during a high-profile 2000 incident in which Metro controllers knowingly sent a rush hour train full of passengers toward a fire in one of the subway tunnels. Hicks defended the decision, saying it was an accepted practice to use the train as a probe to check reports of smoke. She was moved to a newly created position, chief of the office of operations liaison. Her pay went from $122,592 in 2001 to $134,246 last year, Metro records show. Hicks did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Mark Miller presided over the operations control center during an infamous incident in which a Red Line train operator was given permission to abandon her fully loaded train during rush hour because her shift was over. Miller was reassigned last year to an emergency planning job created for him. From 2001 to 2004, his pay climbed from $107,051 to $115,825. Miller said he was asked to change jobs not because of poor performance but so he could provide his expertise to emergency preparation efforts.

Don Painter was moved last year from his job as head of the track department. Reviews found chronic shortcomings that contributed to a spate of derailments and other potential safety problems. He was installed in a newly created job as a project manager. His salary increased from $113,734 in 2001 to $122,710 last year. Painter said he was offered the new job because of his experience, not as a punishment. He said he knew the track department had problems and tried to get more resources to improve it but was turned down by the board of directors.

White said he will be tougher on his executives in the future. "Perhaps I was too tolerant," he said.

'Terrible Waste of Space'

One of the most visible examples of Metro spending is the Carmen E. Turner Maintenance and Training Center in Landover, a hulking, 680,000-square-foot building with 16 acres under one roof.