Florida's Inspector General Needs to Investigate and Financially Audit Fiscally Failing HART Transit Agency

 Tampa, Fl

From: Eye On Tampa Bay
Posted by: Sharon Calvert

HART transit agency is a big mess and is going insolvent. The State needs to step in to investigate HART's financial mismanagement and do an independent audit of HART.

HART has been fiscally mismanaged for years by a governing HART Board who refused to address HART's fiscal failures.

As we reported here, HART was driven into the ground by the same people who supported the All for Transportation (AFT) $23 Billion transit tax.

The supporters of the massive 30 year AFT tax hike wanted taxpayers, especially those in unincorporated Hillsborough, to bail out HART. That is why AFT mandated HART receive the largest share of the transit tax proceeds ($10-11 Billion) when HART has a dismal ridership of less than 2%.

Transit agency COVID relief money was intended to keep transit services operating when transit ridership tanked even more during the pandemic. HART irresponsibly used one-time COVID relief money in 2021 to hand huge raises to its top highly paid administrators. 

HART handed their new CEO - Adelle LeGrand, who had been there only a year, a $37,500 raise. 

The feckless HART Board approved all those big raises - during a pandemic when ridership tanked. Those raises are now baked into HART's exploding operating costs.

HART and its irresponsible Board used bad judgment. They thought voters would pass the 2022 AFT transit tax and hand HART Billions of new tax dollars. 

HART and its Board knew if HART got their hands on billions of new AFT tax dollars, they could cover up HART's financial incompetence and malfeasance. Then no one would ever be held accountable for HART's financial failure.

HART's been thru numerous CEO's over the last 10-12 years. They ran off a previous CFO who tried to right HART's sinking ship. In other words HART does not properly hire their CEO and they run off the employees who wanted to fix HART's finances. 

Read the entire post: Florida's Inspector General Needs to Investigate and Financially Audit Fiscally Failing HART Transit Agency

 Posted by Sharon Calvert at 10:23 AM 

This post is contributed by EYE ON TAMPA BAY. The views expressed in this post are the blog publisher's and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher of BayPost Internet.

 Cross Posted with permission from: Eye On Tampa Bay