Audit: Metro overpaid contractor as problems piled up

A new audit has found Metro overpaid a contractor by potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to help reduce safety problems at the transit agency and continued making mistake-riddled payments without enough internal oversight — even as the agency weathered the worst safety record in its history.

Metro Inspector General Helen Lew audited the agency’s ongoing five-year contract with DuPont Safety Resources, a division of the giant chemical company. Metro paid DuPont $13.7 million through June 2011. The contract is slated to end next month.