MARTA owes Atlanta taxpayers as much as $70 million after overcharging the Atlanta expansion program for bus and other operational services, according to an audit of the program.
The total figure is contested by MARTA, but it backs up the fears of Atlanta City Council members who began calling for the independent audit two years ago amid concern the transit agency was spending too much of the expansion sales tax revenue on operating costs at the expense of capital projects.
Mauldin & Jenkins, the auditing firm hired by the city, found that MARTA charged for more service than it provided in the first six years of More MARTA, as the expansion program is dubbed. The additional half-penny sales tax was approved in 2016 by voters who sought new heavy and light rail lines, bus rapid transit and other improvements like expanded bus service hours and increased bus frequency. Bus service has increased, just not at the level MARTA charged, the auditors said.
The audit was shared Monday with City Council members and MARTA’s board of directors. In a statement, Mayor Andre Dickens’ office said city officials agree with all 10 of the auditor’s recommendations.
“Mayor Dickens and MARTA’s CEO, as well as both organization’s respective CFO’s and attorneys have been in discussions about the findings and a path forward,” the statement reads.
MARTA officials have pushed back on the audit’s findings.
“Mauldin & Jenkins’ calculations are wrong,” spokeswoman Stephany Fisher said in a statement. “MARTA informed the City and Mauldin & Jenkins of their flawed methodology and is disappointed that our responses to the audit which were provided to both parties were not included or referenced.”
Of the $70 million, MARTA has previously acknowledged unspecified “errors” that led to a $9.9 million overcharge in 2022 and agreed to repayment. There’s disagreement over the rest, however.
MARTA said it has already adjusted two years of additional overstatements totaling $10.6 million, but the auditors could not find documentation proving the money was paid back. There is even less documentation surrounding the remaining $44.1 million auditors believe MARTA overcharged from 2017 through 2019.
The transit agency wasn’t able to tell auditors how it calculated the costs those years, so auditors did their own calculations using MARTA’s current funding formula to arrive at the $44.1 million overcharge estimate.
In a letter to the auditors and city officials, MARTA General Manager and CEO Collie Greenwood said those calculations “arbitrarily” reduced the cost calculation from 2017 to 2019 by applying a post-pandemic standard to pre-pandemic times.
The auditors said better record keeping is needed, one of 10 recommendations in all. They recommended discussions between the city and MARTA to resolve the differences in charges and determine what MARTA must repay.
The auditors also said the city and MARTA need to get on the same page as to which capital projects will proceed, and in what order. Since the initial list was approved by voters, many of the original plans have been scaled back, with rapid bus transit planned in place of rail. The list of projects was revised in 2023 and split into two phases, but that was never officially approved.
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