Regional transit $ oversight already busted
“The financial oversight promised to Bay Area voters by Measure RTM’s architects has already failed,” says former BART Director Debora Allen, highlighting huge errors in the system's financial review.
Former BART Board Director Debora Allen has released a new analysis raising serious questions about the accuracy and independence of the financial oversight process promised to taxpayers by the RTM initiative.
In her article, “Who's Watching the Watchdogs? Apparently, Nobody Checked the Numbers” Allen documents a significant discrepancy in the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) Phase One Financial Efficiency Review, prepared by consulting firm Nelson\Nygaard and approved by the oversight committee, as required by SB 63.
The consultant's analysis portrayed BART's operating expense growth at approximately 15% between FY2020 and FY2025. But BART's own financial reports, corroborated by federal National Transit Database trends, show approximately 35% growth.
Alert readers will note: that’s a 20-percentage-point discrepancy.
Twenty points.
“That’s not a rounding error. The discrepancy dramatically changes the picture of BART’s spending record,” Allen writes. “And this is the financial oversight process Bay Area voters have repeatedly been assured they can trust.”
Allen served eight years on BART's Board of Directors and has more than 30 years of private-sector financial management experience.
“Confidence is not earned by promising oversight. It is earned when the oversight catches discrepancies, demands accurate reporting and insists on answers,” Allen concluded.
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