Metro making large budget cuts, eliminating numerous vacant jobs

As Metro, an 11,000-employee agency, prepares to present a balanced fiscal 2010 budget in January, many options are being considered by General Manager John Catoe, including eliminating administrative positions. (Examiner File)

Metro General Manager John Catoe has eliminated 100 administrative positions and ordered steep departmental budget cuts to brace for the possibility that struggling state and local governments will have to slash their contributions to the transit agency next year.

The eliminated positions had been vacant for six months or more and layoffs aren’t planned, although “everything is on the table” as the 11,000-employee agency prepares to present a balanced fiscal 2010 budget in January, he said.

“The last thing we will do of course is eliminate services,” Catoe told The Examiner on Wednesday. “Before I eliminate services, I will reduce our staff.”

The jurisdictions that fund Metro’s operations budget, which include the District, Arlington County, Alexandria, Fairfax County, Prince George’s County, Montgomery County and Maryland, are all projecting budget deficits and are slashing spending as the crumbling economy drains their tax revenues.

Catoe said he has had preliminary discussions with jurisdictional leaders and expected to receive more explicit budget guidance from them in the coming months.

“I’m moving forward to make some reductions this year to better align ourselves for next year, which I think is not going to be a very pretty picture in terms of revenues,” he said.

Catoe ordered department heads to cut spending in areas such as consultants, travel expenses and furniture, and not in areas that directly affect the safety and reliability of the system, he said.

He declined to specify the amount of the spending reduction, but said it was “dramatic” and spread throughout the agency.
A Friday e-mail from the head of Metro’s Automated Fare Collection Systems department to his employees said the department’s non-personnel budget was slashed by 10 percent.

In a Monday e-mail, Catoe warned Metro employees that the agency was conducting “a top-down look at the organization” and was examining ways to trim spending.

Catoe last year cut an unprecedented 220 positions, including occupied ones, in an effort to help close an anticipated $116 million budget gap and to realign the agency’s focus from expanding the Metro system to improving service.

While the budget for Metro’s 2009 fiscal year, which ends June 30, is balanced, the new budget cuts are necessary to prevent disaster next year, Catoe said.

“I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t looking at various scenarios,” he said. “We need to slim ourselves down to get ready for when it’s going to get even worse.”