The groups that signed a letter on Wednesday want to know whether it was appropriate to give top managers bonuses based partly on reaching bogus ridership goals.
Those bonuses totaled nearly $40,000 to General Manager John Inglish in 2006 and up to $27,000 for other top officials. Inglish's other perks including life insurance and retirement brought the total incentives to $100,000 atop his $267,000 salary, according to the audit.
"You could give away free passes to an awful lot of homeless people for $100,000," said Bill Tibbitts, director of the Anti-Hunger Action Committee.
Others signing the letter include the directors of the Crossroads Urban Center, the Disabled Rights Action Committee, the Coalition of Religious Communities and Utah Jobs with Justice.
They ask the UTA board to investigate whether the bonuses were inappropriate given that the audit and UTA itself have said faulty counting methods may have overstated TRAX rail ridership by as much as 20 percent. At that rate, state auditors found, total bus and rail ridership would have risen 46 percent in the past decade instead of the 57 percent that UTA previously reported.
Inglish has said staff compensation is a matter for the board to address, and declined comment. Board president Orrin Colby said though the numbers have changed, the staff did increase ridership.
"The fact of the matter probably is that if you were to count all the successive years in the same way, there probably was an increase of the same magnitude as we were basing those decisions on," he said.
The groups also asked the board to develop a plan to increase bus ridership, which has declined while UTA subsidized University of Utah rail riders. What the U. pays UTA for each student's pass covers just 8 percent of the actual cost of riding, while other riders cover 24 percent of their own costs.
Colby said he suspects the auditors overstated the university subsidy, and that student passes reduce U. parking needs. But he added that the board will study that and every other issue in the audit.
