MATA transparency left the building when Trustee management was installed by Mayor Paul Young in September 2025. The former applies even when $13M more for MATA is considered and approved by the Memphis City Council. In this way, crap MATA oversight is the product of Transportation Chair Edmund Ford Sr. as well as other Councilors.

This MATA matter is of the type that should raise concerns with the press and social justice complex organizations like MICAH and Innovate Memphis. But their silence is deafening. Effectively, the former do not care about transparency or accountability regarding MATA’s implosion, which can only drive higher taxes for all.

MATA Trustee management was installed in September  2025, after the former MATA Board quit, when the City stifled the MATA Board’s move to hire a permanent MATA CEO. At the time, hiring a CEO was paramount, as Transpro’s multimillion dollar MATA management consulting engagement was ending.

Since Trustee management was installed in September 2025, the production of MATA monthly financials and by route ridership reports, for MATA monthly board meetings ceased. Instead, the public is left with crap City Council oversight that fails to demand needed information for public consumption or to inform Council consideration of important MATA matters like a $13M City bridge loan. 

For example, on April 14, 2026, under Councilor Edmund Ford Sr.’s Transportation committee leadership, the Memphis City Council approved a $13M bridge loan to MATA without review of MATA financials or current ridership data. This $13M comes in addition to another $20M outstanding MATA loan, that was approved in 2023. And while there are no current or FY25 audited MATA financials available to the public. 

In fact, it’s unclear whether MATA can even produce financials of any kind after capitally spending $18M (2019-24) on non-working technology and only $10M on buses. Per Federal Transit Database sourced data and calculations, from 2019-24, MATA led its peer group in per passenger technology spend, while ranking last in passenger vehicle spend.

Overspend on nonworking technology and insufficient passenger vehicle spend caused the MATA implosion. Not, as press reported, Bacarra Mauldin renewing a Grizzly suite and using the executive credit card for petty cash expenditures. To that extent, Memphians are ignorant, due to a joke elitist press apparatus, of the real cause of the MATA public transit system implosion. 

Currently Roderick Holmes, who makes $900K per year, is the operational MATA trustee and Walter Person, City of Memphis CFO, the MATA financial trustee. And sadly, both Holmes and Person are currently concealing public documentation. Holmes makes more than 4x the salary of the Mayor of Memphis. Yet, without transparent data, there is no way for elected officials or the public to evaluate the work of Holmes or the financial solvency of MATA.

Meanwhile, the press does not seem to care, nor do social justice organizations, as MATA defecates on poor populations with crappy service and while taxpayers, without good information, are forced to belly up with another $13M for MATA. This lack of accountability drives the only solution the social justice orgs know and that is higher local taxes, which includes an additional $25M more for MATA.

The only data available to the public is MATA claims of 25% ridership increases supported with November announced free fares for all modes of transit. Yet year over year data (Nov-Feb), from the Federal Transit Database shows ridership increases of only 19.3% for all City of Memphis MATA modes of transit. Free fares can work long term on buses and trolleys but not for on demand. 

City Councilors should be asking for 1) the best version of FY25 MATA financials, 2) current FY26 year to date financials by transit mode, 3) Ridership data by bus route and on demand area 4) YTD operating cost per bus route, 5) YTD average cost per mile of operation for each mode of transit.

But so very bad. With NO MATA data accountability, this only drives higher taxes, accommodated by the press and prosecuted by the social justice complex….