MARTA responds to former Atlanta DOT official’s claim of ‘missing $50 million’ from budget

ATLANTA — At Thursday’s meeting of the MARTA Board, a former Atlanta official accused the transport agency of having $50 million “missing” from its budget.

Douglas Nagy, former deputy commissioner of the Atlanta Department of Transportation, went to the public meeting claiming funds meant for the More MARTA program were potentially gone, and without explanation.

Describing himself as a daily MARTA user and lover of the transport programs it offered, Nagy listed out his concerns over how funding to parts of MARTA were being used and accounted for.

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“I have found severe financial discrepancies within MARTA,” Nagy said. “Did you know that MARTA’s own numbers show that more than $50 million has gone missing from More MARTA? For example, in Fiscal Year 2022, MARTA charged $28.3 million to Atlanta’s More MARTA account for expanded bus service, but in that same fiscal year provided none on net. These are not my numbers, these are the numbers that the MARTA CEO presented to Atlanta City Council, and to the mayor.”

Nagy said the funds’ use was unknown and that an audit of the More MARTA program was needed and questioned why current MARTA CEO Collie Greenwood had allegedly sought to limit the scope of the audit. Greenwood’s comments are available from MARTA online.

“For those of us that love MARTA and that depend on MARTA, our first reaction to the financial mess is disbelief, but the ugly facts in the absence of satisfactory answers build resolve to find the truth hand to make things right,” Nagy said, before leaving the podium during public comment.

W. Thomas Worthy, chair of the MARTA Board, pushed back on Nagy’s claims during the meeting, which he noted in his comments was a rare occurrence during these meetings.

“It’s usually not commonplace to respond to public comment but I find it very troubling some of the things that were just stated and I remind our colleagues that we in fact have a nationally known accounting firm, Molden and Jenkins, that our partners at the City of Atlanta are paying a lot of money to look into this, and I am confident that if it uncovers something, it will be rectified,” Worthy said.

He continued, saying that if nothing is uncovered, he would hope to hear from Nagy and the Saporta newsletter.

In March, Atlanta city leaders requested a complete financial audit of MARTA, particularly asking for transparency about a potential sales tax increase for More MARTA.

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In response to Channel 2 Action News’ requests for information, a MARTA spokeswoman strongly pushed back on Nagy’s claims, providing documents on More MARTA’s financials to back their criticism of Nagy’s comments.

“Doug Nagy’s claims of missing money are patently false. MARTA is consistently and rigorously audited by the General Assembly by and through the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Overview Committee, GDOT, and the FTA, as well as on an annual basis by third-party auditors, and all the audits have shown clean financials,” a MARTA spokeswoman said. “In addition, the City of Atlanta has requested and funded an audit of the More MARTA financials that is currently underway with our full cooperation.”

Additionally, MARTA said they would be “executing a true up on an annual basis after the publishing of the final National Transit Database” and make adjustments to the City of Atlanta Reserve portfolio afterward.

“FY23 will be reconciled in late spring 2024 with fund transfers executing before the end of June 2024. The focus of what Mr. Nagy is pointing out is during the COVID years, but he is not taking 2017-2020 into consideration. In these years, the cost of the service provided outpaced the funds provided by the City of Atlanta,” MARTA’s spokeswoman continued in the statement. “If we accomplished an annual true up for those first few years, we would have been taking funds out of the City of Atlanta capital reserve to pay for operations.”

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