A report from BART's inspector general is raising questions about the way the transit agency works with its contractors and is spending its money.
Among the findings, the inspector says BART didn't clearly spell out its expectations with one organization and in another case the agency awarded a contract to someone with a clear conflict of interest.
One of the key findings in the inspector general's report focuses on BART's 16th and 24th Street stations in San Francisco. The agency contracted with the Salvation Army from July 2020 to July 2022 to do outreach there for unhoused people during the pandemic.
"We offered food, we offered hygiene, we provided counseling and prayer if they asked for it," said Maj. Darren Norton with Salvation Army-San Francisco. "We were able to refer people to various navigation centers and shelters."
Norton says they enjoyed working with BART for those two years. But he says there was some confusion about what exactly BART was expecting his agency to do with the $250,000 it granted.
According to the inspector general's finding, the Salvation Army was able to make contact with thousands of unhoused people within that two-year period, but they were only able to get one person into their residential treatment program.
The Salvation Army was allowed to refer people to other treatment and housing options in the city, but the problem was reports from the agency didn't include breakdowns on exactly which programs they referred unhoused people to. That's because BART didn't ask for a detailed breakdown in its contract. The result was confusion over what the money was meant to accomplish.
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"They need to have outcome measures in their contracts, every contract," BART Inspector General Harriet Richardson said. "That's just a best practice that contracts should have outcome measures. You need to know what you're going to be paying for and have a way to measure that you got what you paid for."
Richardson says it's not just the contract with the Salvation Army that raised concerns. Her report also highlighted a $2.2 million contract that a former BART engineer helped steer to a company that his friend owned. The engineer then quit, created his own company and partnered with that friend.
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Richardson says BART should have clawed back the $1.2 million it had already paid out.
"If you're not going to do something severe to stop this, put penalties in place that discourage organizations from engaging in conflicts of interest, the behavior is likely to continue," Richardson said.
BART leadership decided not to, saying the transit agency benefited from the services. It did end the contract and has disqualified the company from future deals.
In May, the transit agency will adopt a new rule that will prevent former employees from bidding for contracts for at least a year after leaving.
Richardson says BART is slowly adopting her office's recommendations, but there's still more that needs to be done.
