The costs associated with Metra’s settlement with former Executive Director/CEO Alex Clifford last year totaled about $1.3 million, according to a final accounting that was requested by Metra Board Chairman Martin Oberman and released today by Metra.
Those costs include $652,363 to be paid to Clifford in salary, accrued time off, medical insurance, relocation expenses and attorneys’ fees, and $662,494 that was paid to outside attorneys to defend Metra and assist with investigations relating to the matter. As the accounting establishes, the largest proportion of attorneys’ fees was for outside counsel retained under a previous Metra Board Chairman. Those outside counsel services were effectively discontinued by the Acting Board Chairman who preceded Oberman, and Oberman discontinued the practice permanently.
Oberman requested the accounting and its disclosure to prevent a recurrence of the issues which led to the Clifford settlement and to reinforce Metra’s commitment to transparency.
“Since February, Metra has been led by a new board and new Executive Director/CEO Don Orseno, and we are committed to operating openly and honestly while moving this agency forward in service of commuters throughout Chicagoland,” Oberman said. “Not only are we releasing this full accounting of Metra’s costs relating to Mr. Clifford’s departure, but we’re applying what we’ve learned from this process to make critical changes that address issues that arose during this matter.”
Those changes include:
- Enacting an ordinance that requires disclosure and logging of all employment-related communications from outside the agency, including from public officials—to address past political pressure to hire candidates or promote employees;
- For the first time, instituting written performance goals and an evaluation process for the Executive Director;
- Requiring hiring managers to certify that they did not hire candidates for political reasons;
- Creating a Chief Audit Officer position answerable to the entire Board and the CEO. At present, this function is being performed under contract by the independent Bronner Group to expedite implementation until a permanent candidate is selected;
- Preparing training materials for all board members. Training briefings are being conducted for new board members, addressing issues such as liability insurance and prohibition against using political considerations in hiring;
- Crafting a new Ethics Manual for employees to use as a compliance tool. A similar manual for Board members will be completed soon;
- Eliminating the use and cost of outside Board Counsel and consolidating counsel functions within Metra’s in-house Law Department, to provide continuity of legal advice to the entire Board;
- Enacting an ordinance that requires RTA notification of any high-level separation agreements;
- Ending Board involvement in approving all new hires at the $70,000 level and above, while improving the integrity of the objective hiring process;
- Establishing an ongoing professional classification and compensation program;
- Providing for the unprecedented release of privileged information to the Office of Executive Inspector General in order to assist in the investigation of the Clifford matter;
- Ending the use of compartmentalized committee structure.
Details about the costs of the Clifford settlement are provided in the attached memo.