Slow Progress in Curbing SFMTA’s Costly Overtime and Work Orders

The SFPD bills millions to the SFMTA each year for services like directing traffic at this recent visit from President Obama. But which services should the SFMTA be paying for? Photo: Steve Rhodes/Flickr
As the SFMTA struggles to provide reliable Muni service, little headway has been made in curbing the amount it spends on staff overtime and work orders issued to other departments.
Supervisors David Campos and David Chiu, who held a hearing on both issues yesterday, say the continued the lack of transparency and accountability is frustrating.
“We’ve been having this conversation as long as I’ve been here,” Chiu told SFMTA Chief Financial Officer Sonali Bose at yesterday’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee meeting, where the supervisors found little explanation as to why the agency has agreed to dole out ballooning sums of money to other city agencies for services in recent years.
“I almost feel like we’re wasting our time, at times, by having these hearings,” said Chiu. “We are not seeing results, but I hope with this new administration that that will change.”
“I think that the single biggest challenge that the MTA is facing,” said Campos, “is not a challenge of lack of funding, but is a challenge of mismanagement.”
The $62 million to be spent this year on frequently vague, inadequately documented work orders is down compared to the $66 million spent in FY09-10, a rate that has doubled in the past decade. However, where exactly that money is going remains “a bit of a black hole,” said Chiu, and critics have scrutinized both the SFMTA and the agencies who are billing it.
“From my perspective, I just don’t understand why it’s been so difficult to get a better handle of what’s happening in the black box of $60 million-plus that are being spent on this,” he said.











