The Office of the MTA Inspector General (OIG) sent an interim letter to New York City Transit (NYCT) in October 2019 identifying serious structural problems within the agency boiler rooms and safety concerns for boiler room workers that required immediate attention. These boiler rooms provide heat to maintenance facilities across the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny released the full report detailing how these facilities were found to have dangerous defects, who was accountable for past lapses and recommendations to maintain the safe work environments MTA staff deserve.
“More than a year after the OIG first flagged these significant safety issues to management, the problems continued to fester and persist,” said MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny. “Ignoring or doing the bare minimum to address legitimate safety concerns is alarming and disrespectful to the dedicated MTA employees who continue to work in these deplorable conditions. My office will continue monitoring to ensure that all MTA workers can do their job in a safe and healthy environment.”
Even after being notified by the OIG about the risks at the boiler rooms in October, NYCT made an inadequate effort to remedy the situation, leaving workers and infrastructure at risk. OIG found NYCT had no comprehensive plan detailing how the concerns would be addressed, when or by whom. The agency created only a list of the issues and before-and-after photos of purported repairs, which at best showed minimal effort. When prompted, NYCT could not provide a detailed scope of the repair work to be done, the dates of repairs, the staff assigned or the completion of post-repair inspection reports. Therefore, it was impossible to determine if the repairs were appropriate and sufficient, or even completed at all.
In August 2020, when NYCT reported to the OIG that all the necessary repairs were completed, OIG visited locations and found this was not actually true. After significant investigation by NYCT leadership into the failures of the maintenance system and staff to report conditions and repairs accurately, NYCT leadership made fundamental changes to their system and reported to the OIG in November that they have taken sufficient steps to finally address the issues.
OIG reserves its strongest criticism for the management of NYCT Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC). It was this unit’s workers who were exposed to the dangerous conditions and who had appropriately flagged their complaints using the tool that management provided them with to assess their working conditions. Yet, HVAC management chose not to act, allowing serious safety and structural problems to develop. This lack of action by HVAC management is indefensible.
OIG makes several recommendations to ensure that conditions will be assessed regularly. But only NYCT leadership can address the dereliction of management’s duty in order to ensure appropriate support for its workforce and the proper maintenance of safe working environments. NYCT has accepted all of the OIG’s recommendations, and is taking many steps to ensure this problem is solved; the OIG will continue to monitor NYCT’s progress to guarantee MTA workers can do their jobs safely in these boiler rooms.
The review was conducted by members of the OIG’s Audit Unit.
The OIG’s report, including findings and recommendations, is here: http://mtaig.state.ny.us/assets/pdf/20-09.pdf
The OIG’s October interim letter, including findings, recommendations and pictures, is available here: http://mtaig.state.ny.us/assets/pdf/19-20.pdf
