An investigation by WREG news has revealed that executives of the Memphis Area Transit Authority spend well over $100,000 a year on plane fares and hotel charges to attend various transit conferences in such cities as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington. As many as 10 MATA staff members attend some of these conferences. In one case, MATA’s CEO spent more than $11,400 on just one round-trip flight to Aukland, New Zealand, no doubt flying first class.
Reporters documented that MATA had spent more than $276,000 on travel and nearly $440,000 on hotels in the eight years between 2017 and 2024. Since travel would have been restricted by the pandemic for at least one of those years, the annual amount must have been more than $100,000. Meanwhile, MATA is currently looking at a $60 million deficit for its next fiscal year.
The real significance here is not that transit agencies waste a lot of tax dollars giving their executives cushy trips to other cities but that members of the media are beginning to question whether the subsidies to those transit agencies are really worthwhile. In MATA’s case, such questions were first raised last August when WREG reported that taxpayer funds were used to give transit executives a box suite at Memphis Grizzlies basketball games and other expensive items such as massages at a spa, $10,000 on party equipment, and $1,200 for designer ballpoint pens (which would probably be enough for only two such pens).
Transit agencies all over the country are crying poor now that they have spent all of the COVID relief funds that Congress generously gave them and ridership revenues still remain well short of pre-pandemic levels. Yet the reality is that agencies are spending more today while providing less service to fewer customers. News agencies need to closely scrutinize proposals to simply hand more tax dollars over to such agencies.
Antiplanner, please let us know when somebody goes to jail. #DOGE