MassPort Workers Sleeping On Job?

BOSTON -- For years, Massport has had a reputation as a patronage haven. Now, Team 5 has uncovered a new example of questionable spending.

Massport just spent $21 million to automate parking at Logan International Airport. So what are all those well-paid parking attendants doing now?

After the final plane of the night lands at Logan, soon the airport is asleep and so are Massachusetts Port Authority workers. Team 5's Sean Kelly's month-long investigation of the central parking garage found work at a virtual halt.

Some cashiers, whom MassPort pays more than $50,000 a year plus benefits, were sound asleep, feet up, hat over the face, in their booths.

"Obviously, something like that is not allowed and authorized or tolerated," said MassPort's Aviation Director Tom Kinton.

What Team 5 discovered during overnight visits was that even with the new automated "Exit Express" system that nearly eliminates the need for manned cashier booths, two, sometimes three, well-paid cashiers were staffing central parking checkouts with absolutely nothing to do for hours. They declined to talk about their work.

It's understandable that MassPort employees can't explain their jobs. Since the automated, $21 million checkout system went into effect almost a year ago, their jobs teeter on being obsolete.

Parking doesn't come cheap at Logan. You pay $22 a day. MassPort makes $85 million a year. You can't escape the automated system. A sign says you must pay before you leave, so why is MassPort spending so much on cashiers?

"We don't want to leave our customers hanging," Kinton said.

We showed Kinton video of what some well-paid cashiers do when he's not looking -- sleeping. We asked, "Is this what MassPort considers efficient?"

"No, absolutely not. That's not what I consider efficiency at all," Kinton said. "We don't allow anybody to sleep on the job and so forth. The people are there because we need them."

We asked cashiers why they needed two and were told that if one goes on break the other one is there.

"We're always going to have a cashier because of that lost ticket, mutilated ticket," Kinton said.

At least 85 percent of travelers use Exit Express, but so far, MassPort has cut its number of full-time cashiers by only 36 percent, from 50 to 32.

"We didn't lay anybody off. We didn't fire anybody, but through attrition we took that headcount down," Kinton said.

Some have become head cashiers in the garage office who, we're told, keep busy recording license plates overnight. But, perhaps more importantly, during the weeks we were in Logan's garage and terminals overnight, we were never asked by any Massport employees about why we were there. That led us to questions about security in addition to MassPort inefficiency.

"To hear that you were not challenged does not sit well with me and it's something I will look into as well," Kinton said.

Kinton told Team 5 that for the summer the agency is considering going to one overnight cashier at each of Logan's parking

Sean Kelly's Column On Investigation