MTA sets record with $1.5B in overtime spending
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority spent nearly $1.5 billion in overtime in 2025, the most in the agency’s history and $367 million more than what was allocated in its adopted budget, MTA figures show.
The rising OT costs come despite repeated commitments by MTA leadership to rein in spending on overtime, which has been at the center of several investigations into wage abuse by workers. Fiscal watchdogs said the record overtime highlights inefficient and costly work rules, while unions say the region's major transit agency is understaffed and workers are being asked to do more, like crack down on toll evaders.
The new numbers, included in the MTA finance committee’s monthly report to the full MTA board, show overtime costs across all the authority’s agencies totaled $1.467 billion in 2025, 4.6% higher than in 2024 and about 33% over budget.
The overtime bill surpasses the MTA’s previous record of $1.42 billion, set in 2023.
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The MTA spent a record $1.47 billion on overtime last year, up 4.6% from 2024 and $367 million over budget.
The transit authority attributed the higher-than-expected costs to several factors, including weather emergencies at the LIRR, policing needs and unfilled employee vacancies.
Union officials said they were not surprised by the high overtime expenses, which could be avoided through more hiring.
MTA budget documents attributed the higher-than-expected overtime costs to several factors, including "safety/security/law enforcement" at the MTA Police Department, "vacancy/absentee" coverage among New York City subway and bus workers, and "weather emergencies and unscheduled maintenance" at the Long Island Rail Road.
The MTA would not provide more information about those contributing factors.
The LIRR, a subsidiary of the MTA, spent about $225 million in overtime in 2025, about 5% more than in the previous year, according to the figures.
MTA officials noted overtime related to daily operations, as opposed to major capital projects, came in 5% below a November 2025 revision to that budget.
"When we focused on costs within our control we were very much on budget," MTA chief financial officer Jai Patel said at a Manhattan meeting of the authority's board Wednesday.
Patel noted the MTA has achieved $500 million in annual, recurring cuts "while continuing to expand and improve services" in a "challenging fiscal environment."
John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union of America, the MTA’s largest labor organization, said the overtime spending is not a shocking number at all given the work required to maintain what the MTA has said are $1.5 trillion in assets, and insufficient staffing levels.
The MTA employed 72,651 workers by the end of 2025 — 2,643 shy of budgeted levels.
"The more headcount slips, the more overtime goes up," said Samuelsen, who noted hiring an employee comes with added costs, including benefits and pensions. "The MTA could hire, fulfill their headcount needs and dramatically reduce their overtime needs. They’re making a business choice not to do it."
Samuelsen said "the biggest" contributors to the MTA repeatedly busting its overtime budget are unrealistic projections by the agency’s financial planners.
Joseph Pugliese, president of the MTA Police Benevolent Association, said police officers, who patrol commuter railroad facilities, have been tasked with taking on added responsibilities, including stopping toll beaters at bridges and tunnels.
"MTA police officers are ready and willing to perform these responsibilities, but we need to have an increase in our staffing levels to maintain public safety and to keep each other safe as well," Pugliese said in a statement.
High overtime costs have been an issue at the MTA for years, and in 2019 led to multiple investigations, indictments and the eventual conviction of five workers on fraud charges for lying about overtime they never worked. That year, the MTA adopted several reforms aimed to rein in overtime costs, including the installation of biometric time clocks that required employees to scan their fingers at the beginning and end of their work day.
After the MTA temporarily suspended the finger-scanning requirement amid sanitary concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and replaced it with an ID card scanning requirement, some LIRR workers began using counterfeit ID cards to scan each other into and out of work, according to an MTA inspector general's investigation last year. The MTA reinstated the finger-scanning requirement in September 2024.
Ken Girardin, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a fiscally conservative think tank, said while the MTA has taken steps to curb "extreme abuse" of overtime, the agency's overtime tab remains high because of structural problems. That includes collectively bargained union work rules that give extra pay for minimal extra work.
"At the end of the day, the MTA is wired to be inefficient," Girardin said. "There are employees who view these overtime figures as an achievement, and not as a public policy problem."
Some of those work rules are at the center of an ongoing contract dispute between the MTA and five labor organizations representing about half of all LIRR union workers. In exchange for raises above what other transit unions have accepted, the MTA has said it wants the LIRR workers to give up some of those work rules. While the sides are under mediation, without an agreement LIRR workers could strike as soon as May.
Girardin said the MTA and Gov. Kathy Hochul should be willing to have the unions go on strike if it meant making long overdue changes that could bring down overtime costs. "They should go to the mattresses," Girardin said.
Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.
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