The buck stops at the Board of Directors

Pittsburgh PA - At first, I thought my favorite columnist, Joe "Softball" Grata (I actually do enjoy reading his columns) was going to actually lay the part of the blame for the Port Authority of Allegheny County's (PAT) fiscal disaster where it needs to be, at PAT's Board of Directors but it ended up being more of a defense piece of PAT's Board instead.

The simple fact of the matter is that the buck stops at PAT's Board of Directors. They approved the budgets, projects, policies, etc. that have gotten PAT into the fiscal disaster they are in now.

Joe does point this out but then he goes into how hard it is to be a director of PAT and that it's a thankless job with no pay. Where did I put my violin at? I have to play it when I read that fluff.

Wake up Joe and stop trying to defend the indefensible. I know you need to be on somewhat good terms with PAT to get information for your articles but let's not coddle the group that rubber stamped PAT's fiscal crisis.

The board itself is politically appointed. While there have been some good appointments made over the decades, most were mediocre at best and some were downright bad appointments. There are no "at large" elected positions on the board to put a riders viewpoint or transit industry viewpoint into the decisions made. The vast majority of board members have little to no understanding of transit.

The big problem at PAT and at most transit systems is that the board of directors are made up of people that are lucky they know what the inside of a bus or rail vehicle even looks like. These board members, with little understanding of transit, then depend on the key executives of the system to give them the information to make an informed decision.

This leads to the second problem. The key executives give them a marketing spin to get what they want rather than the raw data to let the board come to its own conclusions. The board then votes based on the information given to them by management. Joe comes across as though this makes the PAT board somehow not responsible because they only acted based on what was told to them.

This common practice does not excuse the board of directors at all. As board members, they have the responsibility to investigate whatever is placed before them and not just accept what the key management tells them as gospel. This was PAT's problem, the board rubber stamped most everything placed before them and didn't bother themselves to take the extra step of questioning it and investigating it to see if they were being sold a bill of goods by the management.