ATLANTA — Several members of MARTA's Board of Directors, including the board's chair, on Thursday voiced support for a proposal by a key lawmaker to have a third party review an audit released this week showing $70 million owed to the city of Atlanta for the More MARTA program.
MARTA disputed the findings when they were released, calling them "wrong" and objecting to what the agency called a "flawed methodology" used by the firm that conducted the audit, Mauldin & Jenkins.
The MARTA Board held committee meetings on Thursday, and at their outset several members backed MARTA on the issue, endorsing a proposal from state Rep. Deborah Silcox that recommended a third party -- her suggestion being the firm KPMG -- review the audit.
Rep. Silcox, a Sandy Springs Republican, chairs the joint legislative MARTOC committee in the Georgia General Assembly, which has oversight authority for MARTA. She sent a letter to the board recommending a KPMG review on Tuesday, citing "several critical issues raised by MARTA" she said were not addressed in the Mauldin & Jenkins audit. (You can see the full letter at the bottom of this story.)
At the start of the committee meetings on Thursday, MARTA Board Chair Kathryn Powers endorsed the proposal. She said she welcomed the recommendations to explore contracting KPMG for a review and said it was "disappointing, I know, for MARTA leadership and me personally as the chair, that those concerns were not included in the audit."
Board directors William Floyd and Freda B. Hardage also expressed support for a review, as did Board Secretary J. Al Pond.
"This is about calculation. Certainly we encourage everyone to read the audit cover to cover -- there's no mention of malfeasance, there's no allegation of any of that," Board Chair Powers said.
The comments from board members came in the first seven minutes of the meetings, which you can see below. The audit itself, and MARTA's response, can also be found below Rep. Silcox's letter at the bottom of this page.
The primary issue over the audit is that MARTA contends that the headline-figure $70 million discrepancy comes from a methodology that utilized a "COVID-based formula to reverse engineer what they believe should have been charged for bus service in 2017, 2018 and 2019, resulting in false calculations" rather than, MARTA says, what it actually charged and what city officials at the time were aware was being charged.
The city said in a release that the audit followed "MARTA’s current Operational Programs cost allocation methodology" to come upon the $70 million figure, and that Mayor Andre Dickens and MARTA CEO Collie Greenwood, "as well as both organizations' respective CFOs and attorneys have been in discussions about the findings and a path forward."
The city further added in a statement to 11Alive: "The audit speaks for itself, and the scope and parameters were agreed upon by both parties after protracted pushback by MARTA. However, Mayor Dickens draws circles and looks forward to engaging with MARTA leadership to execute all recommendations with urgency for the good of Atlantans and the entire region."
The next steps on whether the MARTA Board would actually contract KPMG for a review would likely come at their next full meeting, which is September 12 at 1:30 p.m.