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MTA ignored looming OT fiasco: audit

MTA brass turned a blind eye to the agency’s out-of-control overtime spending for nearly a decade — failing to tackle archaic timekeeping systems or cushy contracts that fuel costs, a blistering new audit says.

“For years, MTA leadership at all levels has been on notice of management’s failures to address overtime issues but has permitted these failures to persist unabated,” reads the 61-page MTA-commissioned audit released Thursday.

“By not addressing long-recognized overtime issues, MTA leadership has failed in its duty to safeguard the public’s funds and ensure that waste, fraud and abuse are deterred and prevented.”

The report comes after the authority paid out more than $1.3 billion in overtime last year, up from $1.2 billion in 2017 — and 53 percent more than the $849 million it paid out in 2014.

The MTA in June picked Morrison & Foerster LLP to review the agency’s overtime practices after a string of stories in The Post highlighted extraordinary OT payments to Long Island Rail Road employees found by the Empire Center — including some clocking more than 3,000 hours of overtime pay in a single year.

But those stories exposed only the tip of the iceberg, the audit found.

“[P]ossible waste, fraud and abuse, individual high earners of overtime represent only a small proportion of the overtime MTA-wide and are not necessarily illustrative of broader systematic drivers of high overtime,” the report said.

It found that the state-run transportation monolith couldn’t even determine why overtime payments soared or track potential fraud because “it lacks many of the basic systems necessary.”

For instance, the report found the vast majority of the MTA’s 74,000 employees keep their hours worked on paper cards or sheets, instead of using electronic systems common in most other large organizations.

It also concluded that “arcane collective-bargaining-agreement provisions and work rules” are fueling the overtime crisis by demanding unneeded labor and putting restrictions on how MTA management staffs the authority’s subways, buses and commuter railroads.

MTA Chairman Pat Foye has previously argued that work rules and mismanagement are driving the authority’s overtime bill.

“I think it’s clear that the timekeeping and attendance processes and systems vary across the agency, they vary within the agency,” Foye told reporters in May.

The report recommends that the MTA digitize and unite its timekeeping systems and tighten qualifications for overtime in future contracts.