A Reform-Minded MTA Chief Finds Himself at Square One : Drew needs time from board to set up necessary systems
Last year, the top management of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was predictable in reacting to bad news. First there was stonewalling. Then there was rationalization, and perhaps a suggestion that it didn’t matter if the public couldn’t understand what the MTA was doing.
Last week, however, that kind of spin control was absent following the release of an Arthur Andersen audit that severely criticized the MTA and what the report called the authority’s “essentially dysfunctional” engineering department. Joseph Drew, who has been the MTA’s chief executive officer for a little more than six weeks, did the only thing that could rightly be expected of the person in charge: He owned up. The Arthur Andersen report, Drew said, was “a benchmark reference point” and “very tutorial.” It was a very instructive blueprint, he added, for the “change we need to make at the MTA.” Drew’s most telling admission was that the audit amounted to “an obvious assault of facts.”
The change is refreshing, but key questions remain: How far down into the MTA labyrinth does this new thinking extend? Is there enough backbone at the various levels for the kind of revision needed to transform the MTA into a responsive and accountable entity? And, if Drew’s reach and influence meet resistance, will the micro-managing MTA board unite behind him?
Consider the obstacles to reform: The MTA was officially established in 1993, but to date, Drew acknowledges, there has never been a written performance evaluation of an MTA executive. Now, for the first time, the MTA has a chief executive who is trying to bring performance standards to bear on his management echelons. This is generally known as Square One. In other words, the new CEO can’t hit the ground running because he finds himself required to teach the authority to walk.
Which brings us back to the MTA board and its tendency to talk without thinking things through. For example, the audit states that the MTA has done a poor job of overseeing the private engineering firms that have been planning one of the nation’s costliest public works projects. What did that prompt? A quick response from MTA board member Mike Antonovich, a Los Angeles County supervisor, who said he would ask Drew to launch a “thorough housecleaning” at Engineering Management Consultants, one of the private firms designing the subway and other rail projects. That may just wind up as an example of a request that Drew did not immediately meet because the matter was far more complicated than it superficially seemed. How does a new CEO clean house when, as the audit pointed out, there is an “absence of clarity” on the part of the MTA in defining the scope and responsibilities of the private engineering firm and an incomplete set of performance measures for assessing its work?
Drew needs time, and room, from the board to establish the kind of performance-oriented management and oversight that should have existed from the first day. In the absence of such a system, is it any wonder that the wheels of change have barely begun to spin?
