MARTA agrees to $52 million settlement in audit dispute

MARTA has agreed to pay $52 million to resolve a longstanding dispute with the city of Atlanta, whose auditors say the transit agency overcharged for enhanced bus service.

The settlement, approved by MARTA’s Board of Directors in a special-called meeting Thursday, is for less than the city has argued MARTA owed — $70 million. But it’s significantly more than the $865,000 that MARTA officials and its auditor have argued was due.

The spending dispute has been a thorny issue for years. It led to a whistleblower lawsuit that alleged mismanagement and was ultimately settled; an accusation by MARTA that Mayor Andre Dickens held up construction permits in an attempt to pressure the agency to agree to the city’s terms; and a declaration by the chair of MARTA’s board that she had lost confidence in then-general manager and CEO Collie Greenwood.

The impasse also stalled conversations between the city and the agency about how to move forward with projects in the More MARTA program from which the money originated — and which, 10 years in, has not delivered on a single completed capital project.

At the core of the issue: The degree to which the transit agency overcharged the More MARTA operating expense fund — revenue from a half-penny sales tax voters approved in 2016 to pay for transit expansion projects.

The money can now go toward an array of capital projects the city has said it wants to pursue, including light rail on the Atlanta Beltline and new train stations.

The deal was brokered barely two weeks into Jonathan Hunt’s term as MARTA’s general manager and CEO. He was promoted to the position permanently after serving as the interim chief for the last year.

The More MARTA money fight has been ongoing for almost as long as Atlantans have been paying the extra half penny.

MARTA initially split the proceeds evenly between operating and capital funds. As the capital project list was being debated, MARTA began increasing bus service on Atlanta routes.

Fairly quickly, some in the city began to express concern that too much was being spent on operations. The enhanced bus service was ultimately scaled back in Atlanta, and across the entire MARTA service area, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

Auditors hired by the city and MARTA both tried to determine how MARTA calculated what it charged the More MARTA fund for the extra bus service while it lasted. The city’s auditors, Mauldin & Jenkins, said MARTA could not provide documentation. MARTA’s auditors, KPMG, determined MARTA had a methodology that charged for any improvements beyond the base service levels in 2017.

That methodology worked fine before the pandemic, one of the auditors said, but didn’t work after. It incorrectly attributed decreases in service anywhere to the Atlanta operational fund.

KPMG recommended MARTA calculate Atlanta service enhancements as a proportion of its overall service. Under that method, they tallied overcharges totaling $865,630.

The city’s auditors took a different approach, and they arrived at $70 million.

MARTA strenuously disputed the Mauldin & Jenkins total when it was announced in 2024, with Greenwood describing their methodology as arbitrary.

Once KPMG’s findings were released, Greenwood said he couldn’t support a “meet in the middle” approach to resolve the issue because it would unfairly take money from taxpayers in DeKalb, Fulton and Clayton counties who pay into MARTA’s general operating fund that would absorb the cost of any settlement.

This prompted Board Chair Jennifer Ide, who represents Atlanta, to say she no longer had confidence in Greenwood’s leadership, comments she quickly walked back. She said if MARTA refused to compromise with the city, it would “do irreparable harm to the relationship.”

Greenwood told her “there is a larger landscape at play here. We serve more than the city of Atlanta.”