The MTA will convene a special meeting of its board Friday to address the issue of excessive overtime worked by some of its employees, officials said Wednesday. The meeting, to be held at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Manhattan headquarters at 4 p.m., comes as the agency continues to deal with the backlash from a report released last month that revealed alarming overtime rates. The authority's top earner in 2018, Long Island Rail Road chief measurement officer Thomas Caputo, made $344,147 in overtime last year on top of his base salary of $117,499, according to the Empire Center for Public Policy, a nonprofit based in Albany. MTA chairman Patrick Foye, responding to the controversy, called last week for an internal investigation into the high overtime rates, and asked MTA inspector general Barry Kluger to conduct his own probe. "The issues of excessive overtime and the inadequacy of the MTA time and attendance systems must be addressed, which is why last week I ordered an immediate investigation into these matters and why I am convening a special board meeting on this issue this coming Friday," Foye said in a statement Wednesday. "Overtime is an important and useful tool as we urgently seek to modernize our entire system, but we must be sure it is being used effectively, accurately and appropriately.” Anthony Simon, general chairman of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Union — the LIRR’s largest labor organization — said last week it was up to MTA management to prioritize its needs. The LIRR’s increased overtime comes as the agency has taken on several infrastructure projects to expand capacity and reverse failing service, Simon said.<doc-sep>Reports of overtime abuse, a call for a prosecutor and strained labor relations, all intermingled with a fiscal crisis at New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, produced an explosive emergency board meeting on Friday. The hastily called late-afternoon get-together evolved into shouting and name-calling between management and labor factions at MTA headquarters in Lower Manhattan after board member Lawrence Schwartz called for an independent prosecutor to probe overtime and pension abuses. The fireworks came amid calls for the state-run MTA — one of the largest municipal bond issuers with roughly $41 billion in debt — to improve from within have paralleled those for reliable funding streams. The overtime fracas also comes as the MTA prepares for another round of contract talks. “The MTA continues to face steep fiscal challenges and a bleak future forecast,” said Chairman Patrick Foye, citing projections of a $1 billion operating deficit by 2020. Albany-based Empire Center for Public Policy reported that the increase in MTA payroll costs for 2018 alone was $418 million, or $82 million more than what the authority expects to raise annually from its latest round of fare, ticket and toll hikes. Many of the highest-paid MTA employees worked for the Long Island Rail Road. According to Empire Center, a “chief measurement officer” took home $461,000 last year — more than the MTA's New York City Transit chief, Andy Byford — including about $300,000 in overtime. “That’s almost physically impossible,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “To make that kind of overtime, you don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you don’t go home.” The MTA has been using its own police to monitor overtime, a move Foye called temporary, and the authority’s inspector general is also investigating. “I support the MTA proceeding with retaining special counsel to conduct an investigation of the timekeeping and attendance systems of the MTA and overtime abuse,” Foye said after the meeting. Foye added that Friday that five LIRR employees face sanctions for overtime abuse. Board members John Samuelsen and Vincent Tessitore, both labor appointees, launched highly emotional broadsides at MTA management. “These are all management choices," said Samuelsen, a nonvoting member and Transport Workers Union international president. "If you don't want to give us overtime, then don’t give us overtime. Stop the hyperbole, stop the high theater, stop the nonsense.” The controversy has also cast a glare on some of the antiquated practices at the MTA, one of the nation’s oldest transit systems. According to Foye, consultant Alix Partners is working with the MTA on a “rapid rollout” of a modern time-and-attendance system across all divisions. Alix Partners is also advising the MTA on a forensic audit and a restructuring of the authority, which is part of the state fiscal 2020 budget that enacted congestion pricing and provided other revenue streams. “What is this, the 470th consultant that you’re hiring?” said Samuelsen. Board member and city transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg warned against hiring more consultants. “We have a hell of a lot of them now,” she said.<doc-sep>Foran said one driver of overtime costs is a lack of new hires who can pick up extra work as the the MTA aggressively tries to improve service. Overtime costs were higher in 2017, he said — but the agency’s total payroll costs, overtime included, were actually lower than the year before.<doc-sep>MINEOLA, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – At least one MTA board member is calling for harsh punishment for overtime offenders. Now Gov. Andrew Cuomo is adding his voice, and when he says fix it or else, the “or else” usually means off with your head – or as he put it toda, “Plan B,” reports CBS2’s Marica Kramer. “If there is fraud, I want to board members to get to the bottom of it,” said Cuomo on Friday. The massive overtime scandal at the MTA has many demanding the agency take action, which is why the the chair of the agency called for an emergency meeting on Friday. According to the MTA, overtime costs were up $122 million last year. That includes the nearly $460,000 paycheck raked in by the LIRR’s chief measurement officer thanks to a staggering $344,000 in overtime. That adds up to 3,800 hours in extra shifts. MTA board member Larry Schwartz is demanding that the MTA hire a former prosecutor as an independent investigator to bring overtime violators to justice. “That is impossible. Nobody can work that many hours a day. Are you going to tell me that you didn’t take a sick day in 2018? You didn’t take a vacation day? I don’t believe it. Nobody believes it,” said Schwartz. “People need to either go to jail. They need to be prosecuted. And we need to collect the money that they stole.” Cuomo had top aide Melissa DeRosa send a blisteing email to MTA officials demanding that they “immediately” deal with a laundry list of faliures including protracted construction at Grand Central Terminal, not enough cops to deal with “violence and repulsive behavior” in subway stations, and the time used for performing maintenance on subway trains. DeRosa wrote: “It has come to our attention that the MTA stops trains in the evening for eight hour stretches to do repair work, but… Only achieves approximately three hours of work… Even more unacceptable. The MTA pays for the entire eight-hour work shift… Please explain the possible justification for this.” This comes as the MTA has decided to assign agency cops to take attendance at LIRR facilities. Sources tell CBS2 there’s a concern that people are clocking in for coworkers. The chairman of the union that represents LIRR workers called the move “insulting,” saying the officers should be out fighting crime. Schwartz’s charges provoked an intense and emotional debate from union members on the board present at Friday’s meeting. “You need to somehow infuse some competence into this MTA and you need to stop blaming your workers,” said John Samuelsen of the TWU Local 100. “Any transit worker, any rail road worker that does a lick more than they have to do for you, after you sent armed cops into our workplaces, is crazy.” “It was never my intention, I tried to say that up front, to besmirch the majority of good, hard working rank and file,” said Schwartz. MTA chair Patrick Foye ordered the heads of different transit to check the books, giving them 60 days to do a full review of overtime procedures and regulations. Findings will be made public. On Friday evening Foye released a statement promising the continue getting answers about the overtime issue. “I support the MTA proceeding with retaining special counsel to conduct an investigation of the timekeeping and attendance systems of the MTA and overtime abuse,” he wrote. “We owe the taxpayers and our customers an explanation of how some have abused the system and ensure it never happens again.”<doc-sep>
A top ally of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Larry Schwartz, demanded an emergency MTA board meeting to examine the troubled authority’s ballooning overtime costs, following a string of reports in The Post that highlighted the issue. The MTA spent $1.3 billion in overtime in 2018, up more than $100 million from $1.2 billion the year before, with some employees at the Long Island Rail Road making more than $300,000 a year in overtime alone last year. “Given the new legislative authority and management responsibility passed in the recent state budget and the forensic audits we must perform, I think it is imperative that we call an emergency board meeting to take place in the next several days to be briefed on the matter and decide a path forward,” Schwartz, a member of the MTA board, wrote Wednesday in a letter to the agency’s newly minted chairman Pat Foye. He added: “The NYCTA [New York City Transit Authority] and LIRR have had basic internal system flaws in the past, which I believed to have been rectified, but clearly they persist and we must determine the parameters of this issue.” The emergency meeting is set for Friday, the agency confirmed. It comes despite the MTA board already being scheduled to meet on May 20. “The issues of excessive overtime and the inadequacy of the MTA time and attendance systems must be addressed,” said Foye. “Overtime is an important and useful tool as we urgently seek to modernize our entire system but we must be sure it is being used effectively, accurately and appropriately.” Pressure is growing on the MTA from transit advocates and local politicians to tackle its ballooning labor costs. The entire state Senate delegation from Long Island has called for hearings on the LIRR’s runaway overtime spending. Foye responded last week, ordering the authority’s section heads to examine their labor practices and overtime awarded during 2018. And, he asked the inspector general to probe into the MTA’s overtime spending. The MTA’s division heads are due to report back in July. But experts and activists say the buck stops with Cuomo — who appoints the MTA’s chairman, the plurality of its board and claimed credit for negotiating the contracts in 2014 that ended long standoffs with labor at the transit authority. “The governor can’t have it both ways. If he wants to own the contract when a strike is averted, he has to own the contract when overtime costs soar out of control too,” said Ben Fried, the spokesman for Transit Center. see also MTA must curtail 'unacceptable' overtime costs: Cuomo The MTA must slam the brakes on its out-of-control overtime... The Post exposed how some LIRR employees have cashed in on the overtime spending spree, clocking in for weekend-long shifts that allow them to earn more than 3,000 hours of overtime in a year. Chief measurement operator Thomas Caputo made more than anyone else at the agency, earning $461,646 last year thanks to $344,147 in overtime. He reportedly clocked more than 3,800 hours of overtime alone. A LIRR track worker, Marco Pazmino, more than quadrupled his base salary and took home $256,177 by working an astonishing 4,157 hours in overtime alone. That would average to 11.4 hours of overtime worked every single day of the year. Nine of the ten top overtime earners at the MTA work for the LIRR and more than half of the commuter railroad’s workforce takes home a six-figure paycheck, according to the data released by the conservative Empire Center think tank. Meanwhile, other aspects of the Long Island commuter rail operations have come under scrutiny. A recent report by the Citizens Budget Commission found that the MTA could say $86 million a year if it could run the LIRR as efficiently as MetroNorth, which serves New York’s northern suburbs.