Bus operator proud to have fought for workers
To the editor:
The Review-Journal is free to mock 20 years of outstanding service by Veolia Transportation to the Regional Transportation Commission and the Las Vegas community (“Bus contract: Two-year spectacle finally ousts incumbent,” Tuesday editorial). After all, it’s the only newspaper in town, so without any competition it can say what it wants regardless of the facts.
But the facts are that the difference in pricing of the Veolia and Keolis proposals was a paper-thin 1 percent over 10 years to operate one of the valley’s two new bus contracts. And the proof these were the responsible bids is the RTC’s own detailed forensic third-party audit of Veolia, which revealed Veolia lost several million dollars operating the combined contracts the past two years, despite having helped to create one of the most cost-effective systems in North America, ranked among the top 10 in the United States by the Brookings Institute.
How do you save $40 million to $50 million over 10 years? You take it out of fleet maintenance, change full-time jobs to part-time jobs, reduce wage progressions, eliminate family medical coverage or make the cost to employees of “similar benefits” so high that you increase employee turnover and can then hire new workers at just over $9 an hour — the starting wage of bus operators entrusted with lives and the safe operation of million-dollar buses.
It was a little more than a year ago that Veolia Transportation came to the Review-Journal with the facts about the service and its legitimate costs, with binders of information that the Review-Journal never looked at.
We congratulate the RTC, both its great staff and the commissioners, for a job well done the past 20 years, and the two new service providers for winning the right to serve the RTC beginning in July. We are proud of what Veolia has accomplished with the RTC. We are also proud we have stood up for maintaining decent wages and benefits for our 1,000 employees and their families, who we will soon leave behind.
ALAN B. MOLDAWER
LOMBARD, ILL.
The writer is executive vice president and general counsel of Veolia Transportation Inc.
Excuses, excuses
To the editor:
Adele Vandehouten’s Thursday letter to the editor bashing President George W. Bush for 9/11 in defense of President Barack Obama’s handling of the Benghazi attack was mind-numbingly stupid. Mr. Bush was not aware of the 9/11 hijackers’ flight training.
Mr. Obama, however, was aware of the Benghazi attack and didn’t bother to communicate with his security team after one phone call. He went to sleep on Air Force One on the way to Las Vegas for a fundraising event. Moreover, the next day and for weeks, he misled the public by blaming the attack on a movie when he knew the truth.
Liberals need to stop excusing Mr. Obama’s actions by bashing Mr. Bush.
MIKE McCOY
LAS VEGAS
Furloughs and buckets
To the editor:
Reporter Keith Rogers’ Thursday story on the looming sequester furloughs should’ve explained that with the stroke of a pen, Congress and President Barack Obama could have signed an amendment that would allow the Pentagon and every federal agency the authority to spend appropriated money in the manner they determine.
As it stands now, each agency/department has thousands of buckets of money. Each of those buckets has an amount of money to be spent on say, personnel, training, conferences, supplies, etc., and by law they can’t take money from one bucket to put into another bucket.
The players in this little drama are trying to scare the public into believing our national defense will be lessened. The government does this all the time to keep its inflated budgets intact.
If Mr. Rogers had done a bit more digging, he could’ve exposed this, and that would have made a great story. For further information, contact the Office of Management and Budget, and they can further explain this process.
MICHAEL O. KREPS
LAS VEGAS
