EDITORIAL : AN MTA TURNAROUND?; OUSTED WHISTLE-BLOWER REINSTATED.IT was encouraging to hear from Julian Burke, chief executive officer of the MTA (1) (Message Transfer Agent or Mail Transfer Agent) The store and forward part of a messaging system. See messaging system. (2) See M Technology Association. 1. (messaging) MTA - Message Transfer Agent. , that a contract manager who was fired after she submitted material dealing with waste, fraud and other matters to investigators has been reinstated. The treatment accorded Amelia Earnest by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority smelled from the beginning, and not simply because of the MTA's sorry record of cost overruns Noun 1. cost overrun - excess of cost over budget; "the cost overrun necessitated an additional allocation of funds in the budget" cost - the total spent for goods or services including money and time and labor , sloppy bookkeeping bookkeeping, maintenance of systematic and convenient records of money transactions in order to show the condition of a business enterprise. The essential purpose of bookkeeping is to reveal the amounts and sources of the losses and profits for any given period. and other abuses, either. The MTA's inspector general, Arthur Sinai, had described Earnest as ``an honest person who came to the Inspector General's Office with some real concerns as to the integrity of the MTA, and I consider her a whistle-blower whis·tle·blow·er or whis·tle-blow·er or whistle blower n. One who reveals wrongdoing within an organization to the public or to those in positions of authority: "The Pentagon's most famous whistleblower is . . .'' That statement should have set off alarm bells many weeks ago. Burke disclosed that Earnest was back on the payroll during a meeting Tuesday with Daily News reporters and editors. ``I did it because I wanted a more comfortable picture of whether our process worked properly.'' A searching and objective inquiry into Earnest's treatment is essential. Burke needs to get the facts and report his findings to the MTA board and the public. Burke was brought to the intensely politicized and grossly mismanaged MTA to turn the agency around and establish its credibility in the eyes of federal officials who control the flow of transit funds. That isn't likely to happen if word gets out that nothing has really changed, and the Inspector General's Office is little more than window dressing Window Dressing A strategy used by mutual fund and portfolio managers near the year or quarter end to improve the appearance of the portfolio/fund performance before presenting it to clients or shareholders. because wheeler-dealers can get away with intimidating in·tim·i·date tr.v. in·tim·i·dat·ed, in·tim·i·dat·ing, in·tim·i·dates 1. To make timid; fill with fear. 2. To coerce or inhibit by or as if by threats. whistle-blowers. |
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