Metro's concern with excessive overtime began months before fraud investigation
WASHINGTON - Metro's over-the-top overtime costs were such a concern to top officials that all supervisors were put on notice last fall - months before a fraud investigation was launched, says a new report by WAMU transportation reporter and FOX 5 contributor Martin Di Caro.
Di Caro reports that last year, Metro had gone through 70 percent of their non-capital overtime budget in just the first three months of the fiscal year.
A thread of emails obtained by Di Caro, doesn't show fraud, but shows that the supervisors were put on notice and shows that another layer of approval was put into place.
"Overtime had to be approved in writing, in advance and - in some times - only in emergencies," Di Caro said.
One supervisor who was abusing overtime badly has since been fired, Di Caro said. Other supervisors, Di Caro continued, were on administration review because they were doubling their salaries in overtime.
Di Caro said that the investigation was ongoing and that most of the overtime was not related to SafeTrack. He said it was unclear how the previous overtime approval process was handled.