The Metro board is expected to vote Thursday to extend General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld’s contract by two years and raise his salary more than 9 percent, a sign of confidence in the executive who took over the agency during the height of its safety crisis in 2015.
Under the new terms, Wiedefeld would be eligible for annual salary increases of 5 percent to 10 percent based on performance. The contract would renew automatically on a yearly basis unless it were terminated by Wiedefeld or the board, and the term of Wiedefeld’s severance agreement would extend from 12 to 24 months is he were fired without cause.
“The Board finds that the GM/CEO is serving very effectively, and the parties wish to continue the GM/CEO’s employment beyond the current term,” says the document, which while on the agenda for Thursday’s board meeting was not made public Monday with other board materials.
Metro board Chairman Jack Evans said the contract amendment it is a testament to Wiedefeld’s stewardship of the transit agency since he took over in November 2015. He expects the board to approve the measure.
“I think he’s done a great job and I think that he has hired a great staff and I want them to have certainty — the staff — that Paul’s gonna be around and not get picked off by other transit agencies,” Evans said. “When you’ve got the best coach in the league, you don’t want the coach getting hired away by another team.”
Wiedefeld, former head of the Maryland Transit Administration and Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, was the board’s second choice for general manager after corporate financial expert Neal S. Cohen, who had signaled his intention to take the job, backed out under the media scrutiny.
Wiedefeld’s tenure has been marked by dramatic responses to urgent safety problems, including an unprecedented day-long shutdown for emergency cable repairs, the year-long SafeTrack maintenance program, and the scaling back of late-night service to institute the agency’s first preventive maintenance program. Metro’s rail reliability has improved to 88 percent, according to figures released Thursday; track fires have decreased and rail car breakdowns have fallen sharply as Metro has retired its least reliable fleets and adopted the 7000-series as its primary workhorse. Still, the agency is running less service under Wiedefeld after staff successfully pushed to cut late-night service, reduce train frequencies and raise fares in 2017, to the consternation of riders and advocacy groups who derided the impact on lower-income riders and late-night workers. Riders still complain about chronic service disruptions and system unreliability that have pushed them to other modes of transportation, including ride hailing.
In the spring, the District, Maryland and Virginia, in a historic agreement, approved $500 million a year in dedicated funding for the transit agency to support its capital program after Wiedefeld and his staff made the case that the agency needed a reliable source of funding to pay for its long-term maintenance needs.
Metro and Wiedefeld declined to comment on the contract extension ahead of the board’s vote.
Ridership has fallen sharply under Wiedefeld — from 712,000 average daily trips in May 2015 to 626,000 this May, straining Metro’s operations budget year-over-year as the declines have worsened. Wiedefeld also has been embroiled in ongoing disputes with the agency’s largest union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, after eliminating hundreds of vacant positions, increasing Metro’s reliance on private contractors and signaling his intention to outsource critical maintenance and operational aspects of the Silver Line when its second phase opens in 2020. Wiedefeld fired a third of Metro’s track inspectors by January 2017, after an investigation into a derailment unveiled what staff contended was a pattern of record falsification.
This summer, the union authorized a transit strike, though workers have not walked off the job. Union leaders have since called for Wiedefeld’s firing.
“We don’t have any confidence in the general manager and neither should the board,” said David Stephen, spokesman for ATU Local 689. “If the board joins Jack Evans in articulating they have any confidence in this general manager, it’s either that they don’t care or aren’t paying attention and neither one is acceptable.”
Evans said the contract extension is an acknowledgment of an executive in demand.
“He’s at the end of his third year of a four-year contract,” Evans said. “I don’t know that for a fact but I’m sure Paul’s being courted by other systems.”
Robert McCartney contributed to this report.