RIPTA board of directors split on question of whether bus agency is being run properly

PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority faces a looming budget crisis and now a split within its governing board over whether the bus agency is being run properly.

Those two issues were on display Wednesday when RIPTA board member and state Transportation Director Peter Alviti Jr. compared RIPTA's request for emergency funding to a "ball of Jell-O," so vague it could do more harm than good.

That critique and others persuaded the RIPTA board of directors to table a funding resolution for the second straight month as the General Assembly budget season looms.

Alviti, who would run RIPTA if Senate President Dominick Ruggerio's plans to merge it into the Department of Transportation go forward, called on RIPTA CEO Scott Avedisian to develop a detailed plan for how much money the agency needs and how it would be spent before calling out state lawmakers and Gov. Dan McKee.

"I think it's incumbent upon this board, when we ask that of our government and of the taxpayers ... to show them definitively what we're asking for over what period of time and ... the benefits that are going to be derived from doing it," Alviti said.

"But until all of those kinds of decisions you're talking about are made, then we're just talking about the ball of Jell-O," he went on. "You know, you take it out of the bowl and it has no form; it has no shape. And I don't think that advances – it certainly it doesn't advance the mission if the mission is the successful completion of the transit master plan."

Yawning budget shortfalls loom

In interviews with The Journal earlier this year, Avedisian and RIPTA managers have said that when federal pandemic aid is exhausted sometime next year, the bus agency will need at least another $30 million to maintain current levels of service. That budget gap is projected to hit $42 million per year by 2028.

If RIPTA had to close a $30-million shortfall, it would have to cut around 300 of its 809 employees, according to agency estimates. Closing a $40-million gap would require layoffs of nearly half the workforce.

To complete the vision of system expansion described in the 2020 Transit Master Plan, RIPTA has estimated it will need an additional $200 million per year for construction, equipment and hiring new employees.

But the resolution that RIPTA management hoped its board of politically appointed overseers would approve does not include any numbers.

It asks the governor, House speaker and Senate president "to give all due consideration to fully funding RIPTA (in the amount(s) of …)."

'Philosophical' rift leaves board with 3 on one side, 5 on the other

The funding resolution was one of several issues in which a three-member minority of board members expressed "philosophical" differences with a five-member majority.

They included the reelection of Norman Benoit, who has backed Avedisian, to another term as board chairman.

And they included whether RIPTA should be given permission to hand out new fare-free bus passes during a pilot program or study the impact of the 775 passes already in circulation before deciding whether to give out more.

A call for more direction from the board

Board member and AFL-CIO Rhode Island Secretary-Treasurer Patrick Crowley, one of three votes against Benoit, along with Alviti and James Leach, said there appeared to be two distinct philosophies of how RIPTA should be managed.

"I believe that the board should be directing the activities of management within our scope, deferring to their expertise on how to get things done," he said. "The other philosophy seems to say that the board is there simply to observe and monitor what the agency is doing.

"The board's lack of proactive action over the years has led to this fiscal cliff we are facing, and if we are going to turn the agency's finances around, the board needs to be the one to set the policy for the agency, not the other way around," he said.

Back in February, Crowley tweeted in support of Ruggerio's call for Avedisian to step aside at RIPTA.

Avedisian's contract expires in June and the board did not exercise a clause to extend it by an early March deadline.

Crowley, who sits on the RIPTA Executive Compensation Committee, said he is concerned that legally the board cannot extend Avedisian's contract now that the deadline has passed, but acknowledged there are differing legal opinions on the question.

Although at times he appeared to be providing a running management critique of Avedisian throughout the three-plus-hour meeting, Alviti has not commented on whether he thinks it would be a good idea to merge RIPTA into the DOT.

"DOT will do whatever we are told. That is up to the governor and legislature," he said after the meeting.

Transit advocates, a few of whom left Wednesday's meeting shaking their heads about the lack of an approved resolution to seek more state funding, have almost unanimously opposed merging RIPTA into the DOT, a larger agency they argue is primarily focused on cars and highways.

A restive union is dissatisfied with RIPTA's management

Avedisian's struggles with organized labor go beyond Crowley and former union official Ruggerio.

Nick DeCristofaro, president of Local 618 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said the union had taken several no-confidence votes in RIPTA management recently for what he sees a lack of responsiveness to union concerns.

At the top of the union's concerns is too little break time for bus drivers between trips and lack of bathroom facilities on some routes.

"I would hold off on redoing his contract unless things change," he said about Avedisian.

However, he doesn't think putting the DOT in charge of RIPTA would improve things.

"We always stood alone and we always did good," he said about RIPTA's independence.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RIPTA funding request tabled as board divides over how to run agency