The financially insecure MBTA doesn’t appear on track for a positive fiscal year, a performance, one transit agency official believes, that can be attributed to an arbitration award for an employees union.
According to a WBUR report, the MBTA could be in another multi-million-dollar hole at the close of the fiscal year. MBTA CFO Jonathan Davis, however, said the projected $25 million deficit facing the transit agency is false – or, at least skewed.
“All of that relates to the arbitration award to Local 589. Now we are appealing that so it’s yet to be determined as to what that full impact would be,” Davis told the MassDOT Finance and Audit Committee last week.
The award would see “bus drivers, subway operators, maintenance workers and others,” represented by Boston Carmen’s Union (Local 589), get a 10.4 percent salary bump and raises retroactive to 2010 of $10,000 to nearly $14,000 per worker, according to MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo, who has previously stated that such costs could damage the T’s fiscal health.
The T’s appeal, WBUR reports, is scheduled for a Dec. 16 hearing in Suffolk Superior Court. The T is questioning whether or not the arbitrator considered the transit agency’s ability pay the award.
Its appeal, however, could be a fruitless effort.
“I’m working on the assumption that the Carmen are going to get everything,” MBTA Advisory Board Executive Director Paul Regan told WBUR. He didn’t comment on his own views of the matter.
The MBTA’s revenue surplus of about $25 million from last year’s budget “or nearly the entirety of the $26.2 million deficiency fund,” Davis said would go help the T achieve its necessary goal: balancing its budget.
Right now, it’s not feasible for the T to “reduce expenses or to find other revenue sources that would to that,” Davis added.
According to Regan, the surplus will likely fund the arbitrator’s award, rather than other capital projects.
WBUR notes, while award costs will most drastically impact this year’s finances, the award extends through the 2015 fiscal year.
In early October, an unnamed union official, in a message to its members, claimed the MBTA was trying to avoid awarding employees their fair share, after dueling lawsuits by Carmen’s Union and the MBTA were filed in response to the award, granted by Sarah Kerr Garraty in August.
According to WBUR, Garraty scrapped a provision of the Carmen’s contract that required “night-runs” – that begin or end between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. in the morning – to run five nights per week or not at all. Garraty allowed premium pay for night runs to remain in the contract, however.
In a blogpost, Carmen’s Union recording secretary John A. Clancy, according to the Boston Globe , wrote: “We wish we could tell you that there is some legitimate dispute behind the problem, but the opposite is true.”
Pesaturo has stated that Transportation Secretary Richard Davey and MBTA General Manager Beverly Scott acknowledge the good work T employees do and stress that the lawsuit is not directed at them.
Just yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick announced that the T will begin late-night service on weekends, beginning in March or April. To handle demand, the MBTA will hire upwards of 100 new employees.
Earlier today, the Boston City Council approved a police patrolmen pay raise, estimated to cost the City $87 million over six years.
Image via metro.us
