MARTA is a $6.4 billion infrastructure system.

So when I picked up my AJC out of the driveway this morning and read “MARTA audit shows wasted money”, I thought, oh damn, what have those crazy MARTA administrators done now.

Walking back up the driveway, I began to read:  $55,000 in missing laptops!  $79,000 in Georgia Cruise Card fines!

The rage was beginning to churn in my stomach, but I kept reading.  I could feel the knock-out punch coming!  Surely if your sub-head is “AJC investigation: Audit shows transit authority has trouble keeping tabs on its stuff”, you gotta be talking about more than $134,000.  Right?

Wrong.

That was it.  Those two items – which according to the article have been fodder for local news outlets of late (because what’s weirder than MARTA employees racking up highway fines?) – were the extent of the headlined “waste money”.

But thank goodness for random, uninformed opinions.

“It’s a little frustrating,” [a GSU MARTA rider] said, especially since her pass charge will go up in October.

“They need to do better,” echoed Ong Wang, an 18-year-old art student who takes MARTA every day from the North Springs station.

Yeah, do better!  This is garbage! Oh man, pissy and better-than-everyone-else here I came!

Unfortunately, the rest of the article did nothing to peak my indignation.  In fact, it included lots of quotes that just confused my ego-trip…

“This tells me the auditor is looking in the right place where the highest risks are and working with management to try to get improvement,” said Ruthe Holden, chairwoman of the American Public Transportation Association’s committee of audit professionals.

Heh?  So you could have just have easily written an article saying that MARTA’s audits found that internal controls were actually quite good, aside from a few minor issues?  Geez man.  What a tease!

I’m not saying that these two cases of wasted money aren’t relevant in the proper context.  But front page, giant, bold, generic “wasted money” headline?  Come on.

The only problem with trying to make reality fit your perception of the world is that sometimes reality doesn’t cooperate.

Rep. Jill Chambers has made it her personal mission to discredit MARTA, calling on a full audit last year in hopes to find evidence of financial impropriety and an inevitable, glorious “Ah Ha!” moment.  However, things didn’t work out that way.  Instead of expected incompetence – like that at say…GDOT – the state audit gave MARTA a clean bill of health.

With this news, long-time Atlanta business columnist Maria Saport is asking, nay telling, Chambers, to get over it and move on.

MARTA is facing enough challenges with declining sales tax revenues and increasing operating expenses without having to defend itself at every turn from a Chambers’ attack.

In fact, for the life of me, I don’t even understand why MARTOC exists in this day and age. Remember, the state of Georgia does not have any money in the game.

But will Chambers consent?