Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> PEGGY: North county's commuter strain, sprinter hasn't run since early March�after
state inspection found brakes noncompliant now the NCTD in charge of the train is under
further scrutiny after several audits reveal alarming concerns over security, maintenance
and transportation for the disabled. Brad Racino of iNews source joins me with
new details of NCTD. Welcome back.
>>> Thanks. >> PEGGY: Your most recent investigation revealed
a number of problems at NCTD. Tell us what the top ones are?
>> Well this started outlooking into security and we found a number of problems with the
security officers and then the sprinter shutdown happened and that had to do with maintenance
and we found questionable consulting things that were done so those were the main ones.
>> PEGGY: A lot of red flags and the parent problems� these problems affect thousands
of north county users. Tell us about the sprinter being shutdown.
How has that impacted commuting and traveling and these riders?
>> The sprinter shutdown on March�9th and they have instituted a bus replacement service
and by their own admission they do not run nearly as well on time, they have to deal
with traffic, it's affected a lot of people but that shutdown came because of a safety
inspection, faulty brakes. >> And the Executive director, Matt tucker
has outsourced several of these jobs and one of the main concerns is what happened when
he outsourced "lift" tell us about that. >>> It's the district's paratransit system,
it's mainly for disabled passengers, also elderly but people who can't navigate the
public transportation system. What happened is they gave it to a private
company called TLC and last audit that was done they came back with findings, they were
stranding passengers, picking up hours late, dispatcher's attitudes were horrible, there
were a number of problems. >> PEGGY: And the problem with leaving them
disabled is those that had to stay open longer so it had a trickle down affect?
>> Right, it was a liability so they had people that showed up hours early and stayed hours
late to make sure these people got home safe >> PEGGY: And the security was outsourced,
what happened there? >> Security has been outsourced for a long
time but apparently over a number of years no one was looking over the contracts and
looking into making sure the officers are prepared to do their job that north county
is preparing them to be able to do. We found out the vast majority of the officers
didn't know how to respond to common things or major emergencies.
>> PEGGY: We talked to Matt tucker and he denied any problems when it came to the brakes,
what does he say about these new problems that have surfaced?
>> Well we had a long discussion a few days ago.
As far as the lift audit that I brought up in the audit it said the main problem was
the turnover within north county. He seemed to think that the audit didn't say
that. He found fault with a lot of the things we
have been saying and he stands by the audit and it did in the beginning save the district
from the financial peril, they were looking at a bad situation coming up.
>> PEGGY: There are $1.7 million in contracts awarded without board approval.
Tell us about those. >>> As an executive director, Matthew tucker
has the authority to approve contracts up to $100,000, what we found is during his first
four months at the job he approved $1.7 mill to different outsources and one of them was
his colleagues in San Jose and he said to imply that there was any conflict of interest
would be inflammatory but that's what we found. >> Who provides oversight for these contracts?
>> They have a former accountant who is their contractual� I don't know his exact position
but he has been doing compliance reviews and monitoring and I think they've hired a couple
more people so they're hiring people� >> PEGGY: To look at this.
Yesterday the NCTD board met and what happened? You were at that meeting.
>>> Couple of things. They met publically after they had an internal
review of Matt talker's performance, Bill horn came out and said anybody that has anything
bad to say about Mr.�Tucker doesn't know about his performance, they had their auditor
come in and look at documents we provided and they provided an auditor to the public
and funny thing is I went through the audit report and it didn't talk about any of the
study that we mentioned, he called the auditor and he he never looked at any of the concerns
we brought up in the story. >> PEGGY: Matt tucker was up for a $250,000
increase in salary, did you hear about that? >> His salary would be increased� that was
supposed to happen last December, we don't have an actual number for how much he gets
paid because they won't tell us >> PEGGY: They took it off their web site,
I understand. Brad, thank you, folks can see your entire
report on KPBS.org/transit. Thank you.
>>> Thank you.