The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad failed to properly manage overtime paid by funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, allowing for such abuses as conductors charging overtime for menial tasks like washing up for work, according to two separate audits released by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office this week.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is often referred to as the federal stimulus bill.
“There’s significant room for improvement in how Metro-North and LIRR monitor the hours their employees work,” DiNapoli said in a statement released Monday. “Federal money came to New York state to help improve our transportation networks and we must be good stewards of those funds. The MTA should take a harder look at wasteful spending and work to tighten up its operations.”
The LIRR audit reviewed whether $102.8 million spent on two federal stimulus projects from 2009 to 2012 were properly monitored. Auditors found that the LIRR did not efficiently manage the funds and, as a result, employees might have been paid for unnecessary overtime or time that wasn’t worked.
Auditors found no pre-approval was given for the 110 instances of overtime totaling 998 hours in September 2010. For some employees, LIRR did not have a system in place to verify time or attendance.
A review of three sampled track workers also found excessive overtime. For example, on Sept. 12, 2010, a track foreman claimed 24 consecutive overtime hours, an assistant track supervisor claimed 20.5 consecutive overtime hours, and another track foreman claimed 18.5 consecutive hours on the same day. This was repeated two weeks later with 22.5, 18, and 19.5 hours of overtime claimed by the same employees, DiNapoli said.
LIRR officials stressed that the overtime was consistent with provisions of existing collective bargaining agreements.
The state comptroller recommended that the LIRR establish a process for approving and justifying overtime for certain workers, monitor employees to ensure they are being paid for hours worked, keep an eye on hours worked consecutively without an off-duty rest period to ensure efficient and safe work practices, and implement a time-keeping system to accurately record attendance.
The Metro-North audit, meanwhile, examined whether $72.3 million in ARRA funds were used efficiently during the same time period as the LIRR report. Auditors found that one of the timekeeping systems in place, Crew Management Systems, did not have a requirement for conductors to sign out manually, which meant there was not an accurate record of when conductors actually left the facility. In a review of the 10 highest overtime earners who worked a total of 183 hours of overtime over 54 instances during the third quarter ending in September 2010, there were no overtime requests to support pre-approval and justification of 136 hours of overtime, according to DiNapoli.
By Anna Gustafson
