This deficit was caused by eight years of Republican policies in Washington, and outlandish greed on Wall Street that has bankrupted our country and put the burden squarely onto the shoulders of ordinary working Americans.
 
It is a deficit caused by a Republican Governor and an extremist Republican minority in Sacramento whose policies have crippled California and decimated our state’s educational system, social services, public transportation and more.

The disastrous consequences of these economic policies were exploited by BART executives, who scapegoated workers and whose official spokesperson dangerously incited public anger and violence against members of our union.

We are simply middle class Americans, with families and hopes and dreams like anyone else. We have accepted the cuts and sacrifices asked of us for the next four years, which were greater than those asked of any other employees — union or non-union.

Today, a majority of our members voted to ratify this contract. We will sign this contract. And we will continue to strive to provide the highest levels of service and safety for BART riders. That is our priority over the next four years, and we trust that it will be the priority of BART executives as well.

The members of the Amalgamated Transit Union had the courage to stand up and say no to the take-back contracts being foisted upon workers everywhere during a recession created by the reckless speculation of Wall Street bankers.

While the bankers received close to $3 trillion in taxpayer bailouts, the rest of us face furloughs, wage reductions, layoffs and foreclosures. Here in California, the effects of the recession are felt even harder thanks to a Legislature and governor who do not have the guts to raise revenues by raising taxing on corporations and the richest residents.

All of us who are affected by the draconian cuts to education, public services and our livelihoods need to fight back. History shows that our strongest tool for this is our ability to organize and strike. It’s what gave us the eight-hour day, benefits and safe working conditions, and it is what will enable us to keep them.

ROBERT PRICE
San Francisco

Read more here.

It was the BART directors, not the union, who shut down negotiations. It was the BART directors who then unilaterally imposed a contract far more onerous than those found acceptable by other BART unions, leaving no recourse but the threat of a strike.

It was the usual cynical ploy: Stop good-faith negotiations, impose objectionable conditions, then blame the workers for not knuckling under. And The Chronicle fell right in line, painting the workers as greedy when the beef was not over salary and benefits but work conditions, and playing up the anger of uninformed public opinion while neglecting your job, which is to inform. It was that strike threat that brought management back to the table.

Perhaps now you might concede the union played its few allotted cards well. Perhaps you might consider that it was management with their high-handed ways who deserve scorn.

GRIF FARIELLO
San Francisco

Read more here.

As BART careens towards a possible strike, a KTVU Channel 2 News investigation has found the transit district’s management has spent millions of dollars on trips around the world and the nation and lavish meals at extravagant restaurants.

One expert told KTVU that the system’s tracking of those expenses is the equivalent of throwing receipts in a cigar box.

BART management does not keep an electronic tracking system of its travel or dining and drinking expenses, instead still keeping often incomplete paper receipts in cardboard boxes stored in a government warehouse.

Last January KTVU Channel 2 News, using the California Public Records Act, requested the expense records, which the law states should be made available no later than in 10 days. In June, BART provided 14 large cardboard boxes of paper records, which a KTVU news team spent three weeks examining in detail. 

Some of the key findings include:

• A $2,700 tab at Gallagher’s Steak House on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, one of the most expensive steakhouses in the nation. The meal was for 10 BART managers – at $270 a meal – and had no itemized receipt, a violation of BART’s official policy.
   
• A $751.40 bill for some BART employees, directors – and director’s wives – at a Georgetown restaurant dubbed the “power spot of the year.” The Café Milano bill included wine and even cognac, again against BART’s official policy.
   
• A $699.51 bill at the University Club, also on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The men’s only organization is akin to San Francisco’s Pacific Union Club, except it is exclusively for invited graduates of Yale University. The meal was said to be a “thank you” to employees of the New York City subway, who gave BART managers a “tour.” Again, no itemized receipt was provided, although as with all the other expenses, BART reimbursed the tab with taxpayer and fare gate money.

There are hundreds of travel expenses that include trips to cities such as London, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney and Rio de Janerio,  international trips BART policy officially decrees must be approved in advance by BART’s general manager.

There are hundreds of trips across the United States as well, which need a lower level of approval. Some of the dozens of cities visited include New York and Washington, Pittsburgh and Chicago, New Orleans and Seattle, Los Angeles and Omaha.

And BART managers also stay in hotels around the Bay Area. Hotels stays in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Santa Rosa have not been uncommon.

One BART manager rented a room at San Francisco’s Westin Hotel “for staff to change into outfits for parade” during last year’s Gay Pride celebration. Cost to the public: $295.43.

BART managers frequently eat out at public expense. Meals at Bay Area restaurants are not uncommon, such as dining at expensive restaurants as Il Fornaio in Walnut Creek at a cost of $125.57.

Various other expenses were also found in the thousands of paper receipts, expenses such as a tuxedo rental for a former executive at a cost of $109.95, a floral arrangement for $98.43, and water at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square for $81. The total cost for food and drink alone – not associated with any travel – for the nine years between Jan. 1, 2000 and December 31, 2008 was $35,033.90.

Travel came to $2,213,141.22 in the same period.

Robert Paaswell is a former general manager of the Chicago Transit Authority and a world-recognized expert in public transit finance. He says the industry term for keeping good electronic records of expenses is “state of good practice.”

Speaking from his office in Manhattan, Paaswell observed he “would be surprised to hear that someone is essentially keeping their records in a cigar box, which is sort of the picture.”

Paaswell also noted “by law you have to have your financial records in order you have to get by an annual audit if you’re going to get any federal funds.”

BART’s current general manager, Dorothy Dugger, said BART is compliant with federal laws adding “I’m not going to tell you that there hasn’t been a mistake made in eight years but I have a high degree in the accuracy of our accounting.”

Dugger said BART keeps its expense records in cardboard boxes while it tries to muster a $40 million program to use modern spreadsheets such as Excel.

Although many – perhaps a third or more – of BART managers are represented by labor unions such as the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME local 3993 President Jean Hamilton conceded BART’s accounting is “a big black hole of expenditures.”

And although BART’s top management says it has no plans to reform any travel, food, drink or miscellaneous expenses, it does have a list of what it calls important improvements for BART riders it cannot afford.

Those include $1.1 million for backing up PG& E power, $1.3 million for parking garage lighting and stairs costing $1.6 million – all well below the $2.4 million spent in the period examined.

“We’re not staying over,” his mother explained.

“I know,” he responded. “It’s just in case.”

Riding in the cab of BART’s lead car was pretty heady experience for Evan. “He was on an emotional roller coaster all day,” Gordon recalled. “In his mind he was the train operator. He didn’t want me to be there, which obviously I had to be,” she laughed.

From his obsession with trains, Evan moved to animals (especially dogs), and Harry Potter. “He dressed as Harry Potter for two years,” Gordon said. Evan also had an unusual way of communicating through the lyrics of songs and movie dialogue. “He has a very developed rote memory,” his mother explained. “He can watch a movie once and remember the lines. He’d use lines from movies to communicate with me. I had to know what the script was in order to know how to respond to him. If he watched a movie with his dad that I hadn’t seen, I’d have to call him and find out what character I was supposed to play.”

Today, after years of private testing, Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) and loving patience by his mother, Evan is a bright, outgoing student in the fifth grade at Harding Elementary in El Cerrito. As far as Evan has come in the public school sector, his mother doesn’t believe public middle school will be appropriate for his challenges and may not provide the resources Evan needs. “He used to be reclusive, afraid to make eye contact with people, and had difficulty carrying out group activities,” his mother recalled. “To be where he is today is totally amazing. I can’t see having a child come so far and not fulfilling his potential the best way I can. I couldn’t have done that just relying on public institutions. I needed help, and we still have a ways to go.”

One thing that helped was having a job that provided health insurance for her and her family (Jennifer Gordon has another son who worked through dyslexia and today has a full-time job), and a good enough salary to survive in the expensive Bay Area. Prior to her job at BART, Gordon was a bricklayer, building fireplaces, retaining walls, columns and other structures. “That’s was really hard on my body,” she says. “I wanted a job with benefits. I wanted a career.”

She found one as a train operator with BART. Ten hours a day, four days a week, Gordon operates a train on the Richmond to San Francisco run. “Having this job with health care and a decent salary allowed me to stay in the Bay Area, where there are the resources to deal with both of my children’s special needs,” she said gratefully. “Without that he could have ended up reclusive, angry, misdiagnosed. For most kids that haven’t been diagnosed, they go on for years with no hope and end up institutionalized – or something else.”

Jennifer Gordon is surprised that BART’s management has singled out workers like her and told the media that she’s making too much money. “I’m not making an extraordinary amount of money for a single mom with two children,” she believes. “It’s a big challenge for a single parent to be able to afford just living in the area we have to work in, not to mention the different educational resources Evan needs to thrive. With my health plan covering Evan’s health issues, I’ve been able to use some money to pay for the testing that helped him get in the right track. It’s absolutely key to have the means to provide for my children, to give them opportunities to grow beyond what people would expect from their disabilities. I’m grateful for that.”