Report: MTA Shelled Out $1.4B in Overtime; Relied on ‘Honor System’

By: David Avrushmi

The MTA was paying a lot for overtime in 2018 — $1.4 billion – without making sure the employees receiving it were, in fact, on the job.

That is the conclusion of a new review, according to the agency’s inspector general.

Rather, MTA was going according to the honor system. What could go wrong?

Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny focused on the 75 employees who racked up the most overtime among MTA’s 70,000-member workforce.

“OIG reviewed 75 high overtime-earning MTA employees from across the MTA agencies, whose 2018 payroll records showed payments for more than 32 consecutive work hours on multiple occasions, work shifts in excess of 16 hours over several consecutive days, or both,” Pokorny found, according to an executive summary. “Our sample for each agency’s operating department was small by necessity to meet a short timeframe but sufficient to show how agency time and attendance systems have critical failures. As a group, these 75 employees received approximately $7.2 million in overtime pay in 2018, and their timesheets were approved by 33 different supervisors (Approvers).”

Pokorny continued, “For an MTA employee with consistent work hours, a single assigned location, and a supervisor working identical hours at the same location, such as an office or maintenance shop, verifying the OT hours the employee claims to have worked is comparatively straightforward. However, for many of the 75 high earners we reviewed, their overtime hours are often spent in a work location with a different supervisor- not the supervisor who approves the employee’s hours for his or her regular work tour. As a result, the supervisors charged with approving the employees’ day-to-day timesheets must approve the employees’ overtime without being able to rely on their own direct observations.”

Most of the supervisors who took part in the report told Pokorny’s office that they “do not or cannot” confirm that the off-site OT was assigned or worked. “It was common practice for many [supervisors] to rely entirely on the word of the employee,” Pokorny wrote in her report summary.

Noted the New York Post, “One subway supervisor who never once attempted to verify one particular high-roller’s off-site overtime told the IG’s office that its review inspired him to be more thorough — and ultimately scale back that employee’s hours. In another instance, a group of Long Island Rail Road employees collected overtime pay for off-site work on behalf of an outside contractor — who did not keep any record that those hours had actually been worked.”