We’ve grown weary of hearing Metra officials go on and on about how conscientiously they’ve responded to a disaster of their own making.
Yes, they promptly released a special investigator’s report detailing the misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of dollars by former executive director Phil Pagano.
But let’s not forget that Metra’s mess, which had been building for more than a decade, was brought to the board’s attention by a reporter, Greg Hinz of Crain’s Chicago Business. Or that the spotlight was trained on Metra by Pagano’s very public suicide, hours before the board was prepared to fire him. We’re not cynical enough to accept the repeated protestations that no other government agency in Illinois would have reacted as swiftly and transparently. Can you say “damage control”?
If Metra is truly committed to transparency and accountability, then it should stop resisting calls for an independent inspector general like the one just created for the Illinois Tollway — appointed by the governor, approved by the Senate. State Sen. Susan Garrett, D-Lake Forest, is pushing a bill to post a similar investigator at Metra, even as Metra presses ahead with plans to hire its own.
Lobbyists for Metra and the Regional Transit Authority, which oversees the commuter rail agency, were dispatched to Springfield to fight Garrett’s bill, and so far they’ve been successful. Garrett fought back by calling a legislative hearing this week to discuss increased oversight at Metra.
Good-government advocates who testified at the hearing stressed over and over that an inspector general who’s beholden to the board would be a watchdog in name only.
One name came up repeatedly: Dean Bauer, former inspector general for the Illinois secretary of state’s office, convicted of obstruction for killing investigations that could have harmed his friend and boss, George Ryan.
To do the job right, the experts said, an I.G. has to be truly independent. That’s impossible if the inspector serves at the pleasure of the inspected. Hiring, firing and setting the investigative budget should be handled from the outside, to assure that the inspector general isn’t handcuffed and that whistleblowers are protected from retaliation by their bosses.
Metra officials want to believe they can satisfy those concerns without interference from Springfield. We disagree. Their resistance alone undermines public confidence — what are board members afraid of? — and Metra already has a lackluster record for policing itself.
Testifying at the hearing, former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman reminded lawmakers that in 2002, Metra board member Donald Udstuen pleaded guilty to taking tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from contractors over more than 15 years. “Nothing significant was done” to prevent it from happening again, Hoffman said.
Questions raised by Garrett about Metra’s current lobbying contracts show that controls are not in place, he said, and the salary irregularities revealed by the Pagano affair “must have been obvious to others at Metra for some time,” though nobody came forward.
Based on all of this, Hoffman says he believes Metra is “an agency with a systemic risk of creating corruption.” Bingo. The only people who think this can be fixed from the inside are the insiders.
Of course, Garrett doesn’t need Metra’s permission to install a watchdog with teeth. What she needs is the support of her fellow legislators, who blocked her bill in committee in May — back when it appeared the problems at Metra amounted to half a million dollars in inappropriate vacation and sick day payouts, as if that wasn’t enough. That was before an RTA audit detailed how Pagano’s “abuse of authority” enriched a number of senior executives through special 401(k) contributions and other payouts, before Garrett complained about Metra’s huge no-bid lobbying contracts, before the Sun-Times/Better Government Association study about runaway overtime costs …
If lawmakers still don’t think Metra needs an independent inspector general, they haven’t been paying attention.
