Under General Manager Carolyn Gonot, South Bay transit authority has repeatedly misled residents and even Board of Directors
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 29: VTA General Manager Carolyn Gonot attends graduation ceremonies for new VTA bus operators, Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2021, in San Jose, Calif. The new operators will help fill a deficit of bus drivers in Santa Clara County. The lack of transparency and the refusal to seriously address the soaring costs of the planned BART extension through San Jose indicate the need for leadership change at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.
The cost increases cannot be blamed on Gonot. But she is responsible for the failure to promptly divulge them to the public and VTA board; theof the rapidly rising price tag; and the refusal to discuss contingency plans if the authority doesn’t receive funding it’s seeking from the federal government for half the project cost.
Johnson said his team “documented what some consider to be ‘a breach in transparency’ to the Board and the public, and in some instances communications that were misleading and/or dismissive of concerns that were raised related to the project.”That dismissiveness continued. As costs soared and the timeline stretched, critics’ concerns about the authority’s plan for tunneling under downtown San Jose gained more attention.
Bay Area News Group reporter Grace Hase, Gonot said contingency planning wasn’t on the radar, that their “first priority” was the federal funding. A backup plan “isn’t a focus of ours right now,” she said.as “another uninformed assertion VTA’s Silicon Valley BART Extension project.” Gonot says she knew about the development of the blog post but she has yet to identify an inaccuracy in Hase’s reporting.
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