I am disappointed with the Examiner's coverage of WMATA and it's bloated budget. In today's paper, it reported that over 70% of the comments received by WMATA indicated that they did not want service cuts. What I believe is missing from the coverage is where is the money currently going.
After WMATA's last 10-cent increase, I started my own investigation. I found that in 2008, WMATA spent over 77% of it's expenditures on salaries and benefits while only spending 3% on preventative maintenance. These figures are available to the public via WMATAs web site. I also found out that the industry with the highest salaries-to-expenditures ratio is the health care, which comes in at 55%. Since finding this out, I submitted a Public Access to Records request to WMATA, asking for salary information of it's unionized workers. My guess is that much of the WMATA force is grossly overpaid when compared to the open-market and it's the ATU that is forcing these fare increases.
I only have so much influence as a private citizen. I've been working on my investigation on my own time for two months, negotiating slowly with WMATA's legal council to release these records. As a major news outlet, I expected much more from the Examiner.
I am covering my investigation on my website: http://www.mikesoh.com/tag/wmata
All of my figures and facts have been sourced.
Author’s note: This letter was published in an abridged form on April 12, 2010 in the Washington Examiner.
