See: Atlanta transit head hired to lead MBTA
"MBTA’s pick for chief had faced scrutiny; MassDOT unaware of audit, evaluation at Atlanta agency" by Sean P. Murphy |
Globe Staff, November 11, 2012
The newly selected director of the MBTA was required to undergo
counseling with a business psychology consulting firm while she was
running the mass transit system in Atlanta, a fact that state officials
say they were not aware of when they hired her.
Beverly Scott’s relationship with her board of directors in Atlanta
had grown so strained that the board in 2010 paid $144,000 to a business
psychologist to help Scott and her leadership team improve their
management styles.
After a preliminary, two-month round of interviews with board members
and Scott’s senior staff, the business psychologist reported back to
the board that Scott’s performance could significantly improve if, among
other things, she met monthly with the psychologist “for individual
coaching and consultation.”
The results of the full, yearlong evaluation and counseling of Scott
and her staff did not become public as the consultations were underway....
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"New GM pledges openness at MBTA helm; Beverly Scott defends record in Atlanta, says she’s ready for a challenge" by Eric Moskowitz |
Globe Staff, November 18, 2012
Defending her record in Atlanta, the MBTA’s next general manager
promised transparency about her past service and about her plans to help
lift the beleaguered T to fiscal health.
Beverly A. Scott, a former university professor who has spent 35
years working in public transit, returned Saturday to Boston for the
first time since being selected by the state’s transportation board in September — the same day an audit by the international firm KPMG found Atlanta’s transit system to be in deep financial trouble.
Then she should feel right at home in Boston.
Highly regarded nationally and heavily courted by Governor Deval
Patrick’s administration, Scott will become the first woman and second
African-American head of the T when she takes the post Dec. 17.
Related: Patrick may have made T chief pick
But during the course of five years leading the Metropolitan Atlanta
Rapid Transit Authority, her relationship grew strained with its board.
Last week, the Globe reported that the board in 2010 paid $144,000 to a business psychologist to help Scott and her leadership team improve their management styles.
In a colorful and wide-ranging two-hour interview on the first of a
four-day swing through Boston, Scott sought to clear the air. She said
she had requested the audit and that MARTA’s difficulties reflected the
challenges that have beset many transit agencies: aging infrastructure, a
staggering recession, an unfavorable tax climate.
Scott vowed to release every audit conducted during her time with
MARTA — “I don’t shadow box” — and said she steered that agency toward
solvency by cutting service, raising fares, and securing pension, wage,
and health care concessions from labor even as she campaigned
unsuccessfully to raise taxes for transit. She made no apologies for her
leadership style....
I'm sure that is going to make the unions happy.
“If I have to crack a few eggs to
make an omelet, then I’m prepared to do that.”
******************************************
A widowed grandmother with a PhD in political science and the
familiar manner of a homespun storyteller, the 61-year-old Scott greeted
strangers with hugs, sprinkled her speech with aphorisms (“you don’t
eat an elephant all at once”), and conducted Saturday’s interview in the
lobby of the Park Plaza Hotel and while walking to Arlington Station,
where she asked two employees to lock fingers with her for a “pinkie
swear.”
She spoke of growing up in Cleveland’s riot-torn inner city,
graduating from Nashville’s historically black Fisk University alongside
her middle-aged mother, and succeeding in keeping off most of the 120
pounds she lost several years ago through gastric bypass surgery after a
lifetime of failed diets.
But Scott was direct and firm about what she perceived to be undue
scrutiny on aspects of her record, calling it “very unfortunate
distraction stuff.”
“Look, I’m a public servant, always been a public servant, [but] I am
not Simon Legree, I am not Idi Amin Dada
,” she said, invoking the slave master from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and the
notorious Ugandan despot. “I’m very transparent, and who you see is who
you get.”
Scott’s life story is as wide-ranging as her interview style....
It was at this point that I got tired of reading the public relations piece posing as news.
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"Scott’s problems in Atlanta raise questions for MassDOT" November 19, 2012
Beverly Scott, the newly
selected director of the MBTA, faces tough management and fiscal
challenges in Massachusetts. The state officials who selected her say
she is ready to roll. They describe Scott as an inspirational leader
with decades of transit experience behind her.
Still, details that have come to light about Scott’s tenure in
Atlanta, where she heads that city’s transit system, raise questions
about the Massachusetts vetting process.
According to reporting by the Globe’s Sean P. Murphy, Scott’s
relationship with her Atlanta board was so strained that she and her
leadership team were required to undergo counseling with a business
psychology consulting firm. The board paid $144,000 to a business
psychologist to help Scott and her leadership team improve their
management styles.
That in itself is not disqualifying. Leaders who shake things up
often face criticism from disgruntled employees who dislike change.
Sometimes those employees go above their boss’s head and find advocates,
such as board members, to take up their cause. But it’s worrisome that
the Massachusetts officials who recruited Scott now say they knew
nothing about the dysfunctional relationship between Scott and her
board. If they knew of it, at least they could have sought her
explanation for what happened.
Instead, Massachusetts officials learned of Scott’s evaluation and
counseling only after they decided to hire her. Massachusetts officials
also knew nothing about a major management audit of the Atlanta transit
system — known as MARTA — which turned up a host of troubling findings
that coincided with Scott’s tenure there.
Not looking good for the MBTA.
The audit results were made public on Sept. 24, just as Scott
was meeting with Massachusetts officials to finalize her hiring here.
They included findings that MARTA is in deep fiscal trouble, with an
operating deficit of $33 million.
The MBTA's is at $132 million for this year alone.
The audit also itemized tens of
millions of dollars in savings that could be realized if MARTA
privatized functions, restructured excessive compensation, and curbed
high employee absenteeism.
Translation: nothing is going to change.
Scott’s five-year contract in Atlanta expires at the end of this
year; she told her board a year ago she would not renew her deal there.
After signing a three-year contract with the MBTA that will pay her
$220,000 annually, she is now scheduled to take over as the agency’s
head on Dec. 17.
Scott was recruited by Richard Davey, the state transportation
secretary, and two members of the MassDOT/MBTA board of directors.
However, Murphy previously reported that Patrick had
signaled that he wanted Scott to head the T even before the state board
that has authority over the appointment interviewed the two finalists
for the position.
A spokesperson for Davey said the hiring process was open and
honest. Information that has since come to light about Scott would not
have changed any minds, the spokesperson said, because Scott is a
nationally known leader with a track record for success.
If what she did in Atlanta is considered a success.... sigh.
Whatever her problems in Atlanta, she may be the right person for the
job in Massachusetts. But there’s a problem with the process if a
governor’s interest in hiring her had a chilling effect on the state’s
commitment to due diligence.
That's government in Massachusetts and AmeriKa right now.
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Also see: New MBTA chief can’t fix the agency on her own
