MTA General Superintendent Dismissed After Flying To Florida On Company Time
The MTA Inspector General (OIG) confirmed a tip-off from an anonymous source that the employee--who was responsible for overseeing elevators and escalators in stations ranging from Manhattan’s 14th Street to the Bronx--had violated the agency’s time and attendance policies.
| 27 Jul 2023 | 12:31
The train station at 34th St. & 8th Ave., where a General Superintendent that was tasked with overseeing elevators and escalators used on-the-clock time to make flights to his Florida home. The MTA has confirmed his firing. (
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A Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) employee has been terminated from his role as General Superintendent for flying to Florida during his shifts, officials reported.
The superintendent’s actions were detailed in an April 6 report by the MTA’s Office of the Inspector General, which recommended to the agency that he be terminated.
The report indicates that the General Superintendent’s official Friday shift, scheduled from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., was required to be logged using the MTA’s “Kronos” software by swiping in and out of work. Instead of adhering to this protocol, the superintendent simply noted that he was performing field work.
Upon reviewing flight records, the MTA discovered that the employee frequently took flights to Orlando while on duty, using them to visit his home in Florida instead of fulfilling his job responsibilities. This behavior persisted from July of 2021 to April of 2022, with one flight to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina occurring in February of 2022. The cumulative amount he received during these hours amounted to nearly $3,000.
The report notes that “there was no indication in the General Superintendent’s records that he adjusted his shift on that date because of his flight time.” Furthermore, the report brings attention to the fact that the superintendent’s supervisor had suggested that he could take an earlier shift to accommodate his Friday flights, but this advice was evidently disregarded by the former employee.
On the contrary, the employee’s Assistant Chief Officer (another supervisor) stated that the “General Superintendent” never informed him about the necessity to adjust his schedule for flying to Florida.
A comprehensive examination of the report unveils that the General Superintendent betrayed the trust bestowed upon him, by exploiting the broad definition of field work to covertly take flights during his work hours. For instance, the Assistant Chief Officer informed the inspector general that he relied on an honor system for time reporting, and he allowed the General Superintendent the flexibility to go into the field at any day or time during his regular shift. The report indicates that the General Superintendent exploited this level of freedom to his advantage.
Based on this evidence, the agency came to a decision to terminate the employee by July. It was also recommended that the employee’s unearned payments would be recouped by the MTA.
“This theft of time undermined the public’s trust as well as the trust of NYC Transit, and is not representative of the thousands of hardworking transit workers who move New Yorkers every single day. For those reasons, this employee is no longer with the agency,” NYC Transit President Richard Davey noted in a statement.