The group of state transportation officials tasked with fixing the MBTA has gotten the ball moving toward adjusting fares next year.
The Monday afternoon meeting of the T’s Fiscal and Management control Board is the panel’s last before the holidays and their final full gathering before they issue a lengthy report on the T’s finances to Gov. Charlie Baker and the Legislature. That report, mandated by the law that established the board this summer, will lay out a full picture of what the T needs to operate responsibly.
At a scheduled January 4 meeting, the board will be presented with three options MBTA staff has determined to be plausible and that reach the agency’s minimum goals for a fare boost. After nine public meetings, the board will vote on which of the menu items to pursue. Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack wants the board to finish that determination by April, so MBTA staff have time to update the system’s automated fare machines to reflect the new rates before the start of the next fiscal year in July.
With leaders in the state House of Representatives insisting that taxes won’t be going up in this year’s budget plan, the burden remains on the T itself to raise revenue and operate as economically as it can without a bailout or massive investment from state coffers.
MBTA CFO Brian Shortsleeve updated the panel on the extraordinary amounts the T paid some of its employees this year after months of overtime work needed to keep the T running through last winter. In all, 24 percent of the MBTA’s workforce made over $100,000 in 2015, compared to just 7.7 percent of other state executive department employees. The T spent $75 million on employee overtime this year, with back-pay accounting for another $18 million.
One T employee, Shortsleeve reported, made over $300,000 in 2015 by working upwards of 90 hours per week and soaking up the overtime.
“It’s just eye-opening to think we have a full-time employee that is working a number of overtime hours that is also equivalent to another full-time employee,” board member Lisa Calise told Shortsleeve at the meeting.
The panel approved a new fare-policy document, the first step before it opens up a public process to determine if and how to raise fares next year.
Starting at their Jan. 4 meeting, the board will review three prepared scenarios for how and when to raise fares on the subway, commuter rail and bus lines.
At a meeting on the fare policy earlier this month, transit officials gathered input from the public to include in the policy.
“A number of people at the meeting and in the comments asked that we put in the policy the goal of small, predictable increases instead of small unpredictable increases,” Laurel Paget-Seekins, the MBTA’s director of research and analysis told the board.
The board also took action to advance the Green Line Extension project, keeping it going until the board can decide on either a significant overhaul or the project’s ultimate demise. The panel voted to empower MBTA General Manager Frank DePaola with the authority to work to find someone to oversee the project, which cost estimates have showed is over-budget to the tune of potentially $1 billion.
DePaola will find an interim project manager and execute some work orders to continue work and oversight on extension of the line into Somerville and Medford. DePaola’s mandate is limited to spending $250,000 before the Fiscal Control Board’s next meeting on January 4.
“We do look forward to the January meeting to a pretty detailed 90-day plan. I think as part of it, we’d certainly like to sort of also have a sense of what you believe interim organization might look like,” and what key positions might be for the Green Line project, board chairman Joseph Aiello said to DePaola.
