LIRR official secured job for son with company doing business with railroad, MTA report finds

A former Long Island Rail Road official seeking a job for his son asked for help from six companies doing business with the railroad, according to an MTA inspector general's report.

The 12-page report, released Wednesday, described the official as former assistant chief program officer-railroad program support, a senior management role that oversees railroad capital projects, but did not name him or the companies. The report concluded the official violated an MTA prohibition against soliciting gifts and the state’s public officer law, and the vendors violated the MTA ethics code by not reporting the official’s requests.

"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," MTA Inspector General Daniel Cort said. "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."

According to the report, the official used his Metropolitan Transportation Authority email account to send his son’s resume to employees at each of the six companies. Some of those contacts were former LIRR employees. An employee at one company shared the resume with the company's executive vice president, highlighting that it was from the "Son" of the LIRR official.   

A 2023 approach resulted in a job for the son at one of the companies, while the LIRR official continued to oversee the company’s work for the MTA. 

Later, when the company’s general counsel discovered email exchanges between the official and a company employee, both the son and the employee were fired, according to the report.

The former official retired in September 2025 "while this matter was pending," according to the report, which said all six of the companies currently have contracts with the MTA.

Job search investigation

The inspector general referred the former employee's potential violations of the public officer law to the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government. That body "has its own enforcement proceedings and may impose civil penalties even if an employee has retired," a spokeswoman for the inspector general, Danika Fears, said in an email.

The commission did not respond to a request for comment. 

The job search investigation grew out of an earlier investigation into improper communication between the official and the company where his son worked. The company was preparing a proposal for an MTA engineering program and the official belonged to a committee that worked on reviewing the proposals.

The inspector general's investigation into that matter found no evidence that the official had tried to sway other committee members or that the company had gotten any advantage in the request for proposals process, executive deputy inspector General Stacy Aronowitz wrote in an August 2025 letter to MTA chief administrative officer Lisette Camilo, which was included in the report.

In an email, MTA spokesman Michael Cortez noted the inspector general "agrees that the procurement process was not compromised. However, this conduct violated our code of ethics, which must be followed at all times, and we expect employees and vendors alike to report any behavior that raises concerns."

In responses to the inspector general’s findings included in the report, the MTA said it would "outreach to each of the six vendors" to ask why their employees did not recognize and report the LIRR officer’s request as improper. The MTA also would require proof from the vendors that they had distributed the agency’s vendor code of ethics to their employees. 

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.