At the MBTA, sometimes the only things older than the ancient subway cars and signal equipment are venerable traditions of dysfunction scattered throughout the transit system’s operations. So it was no surprise Tuesday when state Auditor Suzanne Bump revealed the T has left almost $1 million in accounts receivable balances on the books for over a decade without collecting the money due.
Bump found that $1,863,103 due to to be paid to the MBTA were more than 90 days past due and almost half of that amount has been on the books for over a decade.
“Our audit found the MBTA, an agency with chronic management and funding challenges, was not properly collecting outstanding balances, and was leaving unpaid balances on their books for an extended period of time,” Bump wrote in a statement on the audit.
Bump recommended that Gov. Charlie Baker’s new hand-picked MBTA management team should make sure they have functioning oversight systems before making changes. The natural order of management at the T, it would seem, is to find a way against all odds to function poorly.
“Without these protections, systemic problems like those identified in our audit will likely continue, despite structural changes.,” Bump said.
And the T’s new management seems to agree. In response to the audit, MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo provided examples of cost savings the new board and managers have cracked down on, including fixes to screwups on health care benefit plans, replacing six of seven top managers in the Human Resources department and billing station tenants what they owe for utility costs.
“Many months ago, the MBTA launched a concerted effort to find and correct years old, if not decades old, bad practices that have been costing the MBTA money. The T has been finding a significant legacy of mismanagement with respect to certain contractual agreements and relationships with other agencies,” Pesaturo wrote.
Bump’s audit looked at data from July 2012 to June 2015, before the MBTA’s new Fiscal and Management Control Board was established and began identifying problems areas at the agency.
