A Metro manager in charge of bringing art into stations who was laid off amid a budget crisis has been reinstated after board members fought for his return.
Michael McBride, who oversees Metro’s Art in Transit program, was among 46 employees laid off Feb. 18, The Examiner has learned.
The pink slips were doled out as the transit agency has been staring at back-to-back budget shortfalls. Metro decided in January to make $8 million in administrative cuts to close a $40 million emergency budget gap. And it has proposed another $16 million in departmental reductions to close an $189 million hole.
Meanwhile, the agency could be facing untold other costs to improve transit safety once federal investigators rule on the cause of the June 22 train crash.
But e-mails flew among board members last week once they learned that McBride, head of the two-person art program, was among the cuts.
His job has been to bring artwork into Metro stations, most recently coordinating donations made to the Farragut West and Takoma Park Metrorail stations. He is paid about $100,000 a year, according to Metro e-mails obtained by The Examiner. McBride did not return a call for comment.
“In dismissing the person responsible for this program, you have effectively discontinued it,” board member Christopher Zimmerman wrote in an e-mail to General Manager John Catoe. “This was a board-initiated program, with substantial board involvement over the last decade. Discontinuing it is a policy matter.”
Board member Jim Graham said he was too busy to ask for McBride’s reinstatement but would have supported it. “Typically I do not intervene in personnel issues because it’s something we delegate to the general manager,” he said.
But he said he worked with McBride over the years. “I very much value his services,” he said. “He’s a real contributor.”
Zimmerman also told The Examiner that he, too, doesn’t usually intervene in such issues.
“I don’t get involved in decisions of personnel,” he said. “I do get involved in questions of policy and I do get involved in how employees are treated and that’s a policy question.”
Catoe defended the layoff in an e-mail, saying the program’s workload had diminished in the past few years, but the transit agency would continue to install public art.
However, Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said Friday McBride had been reinstated. She declined to explain why, saying it was a personnel decision.
