A shameless Long Island Rail Road executive pushed an MTA contractor to give his son a job after shopping him around to five other vendors, a scathing new watchdog report said.
LIRR former Assistant Chief Program Officer Andrew Arenth used his position to improperly reach out to employees at six companies with active contracts with the transit agency in 2023 — eventually getting one of the businesses to hire him, according to a probe by the MTA inspector general.
IG Daniel Cort also put the vendors on notice for never reporting the blatant ethics violation.
“MTA officials are entrusted to act in the public interest, not to use their positions for personal gain, such as finding jobs for their children,” Inspector General Daniel Cort said in a statement.
“This Long Island Rail Road official abused that trust and violated the MTA’s ethical standards with his conduct. Vendors for the MTA have a duty to immediately report unethical requests like this.”
Arenth, who Cort said was in charge of leading the LIRR’s major projects and investments, didn’t recuse himself from overseeing that company’s work with the agency after his son was hired. The company wasn’t named in the report.
The brazen railroad official used his MTA email account to blast his son’s resume out to employees at the six firms while overseeing big money infrastructure work, the report said.
One company, identified only as “Vendor 1,” ultimately brought the son on board, though he was assigned to a non-MTA project, the report detailed.
None of the six firms reported the outreach to the MTA’s Chief Compliance Officer, as required under the agency’s Vendor Code of Ethics, according to the 12-page report.
Investigators said the official’s conduct was the equivalent of “soliciting” companies into giving him a type of prohibited “gift” — in this case, employment for his son — from businesses actively doing work with the railroad.
The former brass’ son has since been canned, the report detailed, along with a vendor employee who helped facilitate the hire. Neither was identified in the IG report.
The IGl did not recommend any discipline because Arenth has already left LIRR, but the report said the case was sent to the state ethics commission for any possible further action.