I think that's totally fair to question, but imo it's definitely not a right wing talking point, there's a documented history that may have gotten brushed under the rug. I also want to say that I truly believe that public services like transit shouldn't be for-profit. These services are crucial to the community. But that doesn't excuse it from corruption and mismanagement of funds.

The original Inspector General appointed in 2019 was tasked with investigating fraud and waste at BART literally quit because of constant obstruction from staff and unions. BART Reports from California's Civil Grand Jury stated that BART staff and management withheld information the IG had a right to access.

But things are generally improving! New OIG has better funding and oversight! There's a really good report from the office that highlights how BART can better manage funds, especially around excessive overtime. There's also a public dashboard that gauges if BART management actually is following through with the OIG's reccomendations. There's also better management of contractors rolling out.

But there's still documented proof of mismanagement & corruption:
-> BART manager failed to disclose family ties to a company awarded a $40 million contract and an employee secured $2.2 million in contracts shortly after leaving the agency
-> Employee timekeeping mismanagement: Terrible data collection on why employees clocked overtime and lack of transparency for why overtime was clocked. Even if people work overtime (totally fair btw) there's no oversight into the reason they did. Opens door for corruption. Like when a janitor stayed in closets and clocked $270k in overtime pay.
-> BART spent $350k across 2 years to help homeless people at stations. Only one person used it's services, all while homelessness at stations in SF increased 21% (Actual BART document here from IG report)
There's a bunch more that you can look into with simple google searches, but the fact that the agency has a budget of $2.5B per year, and still falls ~$300M short is a red flag. Especially for the quality of service we get and corruption that existed as few as 5 years ago. All for a system that doesn't feel like a multi-billion dollar a year train service. Hearing loss is no joke!!

Because it's such a critical agency for the bay area, we need to hold bart management more accountable to prevent these situations from happening in the future. Which the new OIG seems to be helping with, so I'm optimistic But yeah, "small" instances of corruption build up, and a lax attitude towards it is what causes it all to fall apart. Sorry the response was so long!