Sarles, deputies can use vehicles in addition to 116 managers, cops
Six of Metro’s top executives are assigned agency-owned vehicles that they can drive home, the transit system acknowledged Tuesday, one day after saying none of them had take-home vehicles.
That is in addition to the 116 Metro employees who receive take-home vehicles, including 88 managers and superintendents, first reported by The Washington Examiner.
Metro spokesman Dan Stessel initially said nobody on the 16-member executive leadership team has a take-home vehicle except for Police Chief Michael Taborn. He said executives such as General Manager Richard Sarles have access to a pool of vehicles, if needed.
But Sarles and four of his top deputies have specific vehicles assigned to them, he acknowledged Tuesday. They can take the vehicles home but don’t necessarily choose to do so every day, he said.
Additionally, Chief Safety Officer James Dougherty has what the agency considers a take-home vehicle and does use it to drive home. He was mistakenly omitted from the list of employees with take-home cars, Stessel said.
But Stessel said the agency doesn’t consider the cars assigned to the other executives take-home cars. Other Metro workers can use the vehicles and the nine other vehicles in the pool, he noted.
However, that’s the same policy Metro had said applied to all its take-home vehicles. In response to a public records request on take-home vehicles, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority wrote to The Examiner that other employees could use the vehicles assigned to the 116 workers with take-home vehicles.
“Moreover, even though the vehicles are issued to employees as take-home vehicles, use of the vehicles is not limited to just those employees,” the letter said. “The vehicles can and are used by other WMATA employees for WMATA business.”
The distinction highlights the definition of a take-home vehicle: Does it need to be driven home every day to be considered one?
Sarles regularly takes the Yellow Line to commute to work, Stessel said. But he said deputy general managers Dave Kubicek and Carol Dillon Kissal and Assistant General Manager of Bus Services Jack Requa take the vehicles home occasionally.
“It’s not their regular commute,” he said. “It varies based on business need.”
Chief of Staff Shiva Pant also uses his assigned car, but Stessel did not know how often.
Metro could not provide specifics Tuesday on how often any of them use the vehicles, nor the makes and models of the cars.
“Taking the vehicle home is not required for work purposes — as it is for, say, the [police] chief, K9 officers, critical operations personnel, etc. who may need a vehicle to respond to an incident,” Stessel wrote in an email.
It is common for government agencies to provide take-home vehicles to some workers, especially in police departments.
At Metro, take-home cars may be used only for job-related trips. They are given to essential workers who must be able to respond anywhere in the agency’s 1,500 square-mile service area, according to Metro, as the supervisors may need to travel before the system opens or to reach construction sites or tracks that don’t have direct transit service. The agency has said it does not track the annual cost for the program.
