It seems a bit ironic that oversight of the base mass-transit program was taken away from the UTA, "a large organization that operates without the market pressures that apply to private businesses" and returned to the Air Force, the "large organization" that is being criticized in the story for its too close-to-the-chest approach to audits.

I would think that there might be some sort of comprimise that would be better than either scenerio. Perhaps one that operates WITH the market pressures that apply to private businesses.

People who steal from the government are criminals and should be punished. Stealing from the government is stealing from ordinary people who finance the government through taxes.

The more disturbing thing is the number of employees who didn't have a problem with exploiting the lack of oversight and taking clearly more than they were entitled to.
If this program is properly administered it is a good value. Not only would it take cars off the road, it would reduce the amount of valuable base real estate consumed by parking, and reduce the traffic enforcement and congestion problems on the base.

mmmm maybe we should be concerned about who is running the base? Maybe we should be concerned that this is an example of a nationwide problem especially since the Bush/Cheney lot have been in office

Hill bought UTA's claim of quality management. DMN has no excuse; it has hyped UTA while ignoring red flags.

The vanpool program seemed good. Now we find UTA pedaling bad assumptions that every van is mostly full and travels far. An outside audit, again, has shown UTA cooking their books to build their empire.

There were two previous scandals of miscounting/misreporting ridership at UTA. There was the TRAX over-counts of up to 18,000 a day, leading up to the multibillion dollar transit tax hike election in Nov. 2006. UTA fooled us un-fair and un-square.

Then there was the bus under-reporting of passenger miles traveled of almost 90 million in 2004. That was crucial as the decision was being made to replace very full and effective express buses with very expensive, marginal, FrontRunner, whose locomotives are diesel-fuel hogs.

The fault here is the same one that caused the other scandals, lack of effective oversight. UTA's big bonuses for managers that reward them with thousands of dollars to make their departments look super-productive or that induce the government/public to funnel more money to UTA. This is a disease that UTA management spreads and the Board of directors rewards for their empire!

All those who received funds in error and did nothing should be charged with theft and prosecuted. Those convicted should be required to refund double or triple the amount they received, even if that means garnishing their pensions. Set an example.

I'm curious how many people who were listed twice, or retired/relocated actually cashed in vouchers. A lot of times the auditors come up with "material savings" that are not material. I was at Hill and the auditors said we had lost over 200 computers. Actually we had incorrectly done the paperwork to remove the computers from our inventory so we could not prove they had been turned in. They had been, and they had no value. It was when Pentiums first came out and the missing computers were 286's. But they were valued at $2500 each. Anyway, audits can be confusing. We were guilty of poor admin practices to be sure. But we didn't lose 200 computers worth $500,000.