Muni haters, take a good look at the guy to your right — he’s the new focus for your ire: John J. Haley, the SF MTA’s new Director of Transit who’s “responsible for the overall direction, management and operations of Muni service for San Francisco.”
What? So now Muni’s hiring people? you’re probably asking. OK, here’s the back story: since SF MTA’s Chief Operating Officer, Ken McDonald, abruptly left the agency in August of last year his role’s been filled by David Hill, who was Muni’s Deputy Director of Bus Operations. Since then, the MTA’s reorganized and the position’s now called Director of Transit. And as of last week (and what a week to start work, eh?), Haley’s been on the case, and Hill’s back to Bus Ops.
According to a press release sent out by the MTA, Haley’s a 30 year veteran of the industry, and was most recently Vice-President of Infrastructure and Service Development at the Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro) in Houston.
Of course, I ran down my IM list of in-the-know Texas-based journalists to get their take on Haley’s last place of employment, one of whom said “Houston’s public transport is a joke,” and another who said “sorry, not being mean, it’s just, um, unless you clean houses for a living, you don’t know what the Metro is.” (Somebody remind me to get less fancy-pants Texan journo friends.)
Most tellingly, my friend who reports on transit for a major newspaper in the area said “this might be a frying pan/fire situation. Or it just might be another pan.”
Fortunately, Haley has more than the maligned Metro under his belt: the MTA’s release also says he has been “Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, General Manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), (and) Deputy General Manager of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART)”
Of course, in this time of Muni budget misery, one does have to ask: what are we paying this guy? According to MTA spokesperson Judson True, Haley’s salary’s $225,038 (True did not respond to a question on if Haley was eligible for bonuses and, if so, what those would be). According to my reporter source (who declined to be named due to their bosses “old media hatred of collaboration”), this is probably a sizable raise for Haley but did note that with our high cost of living and the headaches he’d be walking into “it seems fair enough.”
*said with apologies to all our readers who make $225,039 or more, also, wanna date?
