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Feds Uncover Serious Issues with NJ Transit After Deadly Accident

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The recently hired executive director of New Jersey Transit, Steven Santoro, failed to provide any encouragement that changes would be underway and passengers of N.J. Transit would be safer in the future when he failed to even show up at an investigative hearing in October.

In the wake of an accident involving a New Jersey Transit train crashing into a station in Hoboken, N.J. where a woman was killed and more than a 100 people injured, federal investigations have been underway to both determine the cause and prevent this from happening again. What’s been uncovered has been numerous safety issues with New Jersey Transit, leadership problems and financial issues. The recently hired executive director of New Jersey Transit, Steven Santoro, failed to provide any encouragement that changes would be underway and passengers of N.J. Transit would be safer in the future when he failed to even show up at an investigative hearing in October. His excuse given, when, he did finally testify on Friday, November 4th was a schedule conflict involving a meeting with the Federal Railroad Administration, even though that could have been avoided. As he put it, “After being on the job for only a few days, I felt I needed to have a better understanding the agency.”

Among the problems found by the investigators with how New Jersey Transit railroads ran the trains were workers using their personal cellphones while on duty, train crews not properly testing brakes and failing to blow horns at crossings. According to Mr. Santoro, who has now had three weeks to deal with such issues among others, exclaimed how “These findings are unacceptable.” Although he did claim that the railroad under his direction was making an effort to make passengers safer and fill “critical vacancies” in their rail division by hiring rail managers and similar employees. Federal investigators have been relentless in their proceedings, throwing ample questions at N.J. Transit personnel while assessing thousands of pages of documents submitted to them.

Another issue brought to light by the federal investigators was the hiring of unqualified personnel in the name of political cronyism. For example, Michael Drewniak, who used to be a press secretary for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, has drawn criticism for his hiring in 2015 by the New Jersey Transit, since he has no transportation experience whatsoever. While serving as N.J. Transit’s chief of staff, he was one of the highest paid members of the agency. As he tried to fend off questions about Mr. Drewniak’s employment at N.J. Transit thrown at him by John F McKeon, a Democratic State Assemblyman who is heading the Judiciary Committing investigating the train crash incident; Mr. Santaro not only exclaimed that he was not executive director when Michael Drewniak was hired but that he now had a different chief of staff, Paul Wyckoff, who was accompanying him at the hearing.

Mr. Drewniak was still employed by N.J. Transit at the time of the hearings as policy and director of strategic planning. Steven Santoro was and others were accused of “dancing a bit” by Mr. McKeon in regards to the hiring of political cronies of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie by the N.J. Transit even though they did not have the proper experience for the job. 10 others were identified as such, but not named. As Mr. McKeon put it, “We’re going to stop New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority and other places as being dumping grounds for patronage. That has got to stop.”

By: Anat Ghelber

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