
Ona Brouse
24:41 - 25:49
"From the pandemic forward, public transit has had real issues with having enough drivers to cover the bus routes and having to do mandatory OT specifically in order to keep the bus routes running."
“From the pandemic forward, public transit has had real issues with having enough drivers to cover the bus routes and having to do mandatory OT specifically in order to keep the bus routes running.”
- Speaker
- Ona Brouse
- Timestamp
- 24:41 – 25:49
- Community
- Alaska News
- Location
- Anchorage, AK, USA
- Captured at
- August 20, 2026
From the transcript
From the pandemic forward, public transit has had real issues with having enough drivers to cover the bus routes and having to do mandatory OT specifically in order to keep the bus routes running. With the number of vacancies that were occurring during 2021 and '22, they were running much larger overtime budgets. As a, as a combination of that that plus additional worker callout. And you'll see in the '25 report versus the '26 report that they are sort of trying to control to a level that is no longer accurate for public transit. This is something that we spoke with Director Rudolph about during our budget conversation, that the sort of new ability to recruit and retain within transit needs to be taken into consideration for the vacancies that they have and how we are able to cover the fixed routes, because otherwise it turns into a very large amount of mandatory OT and callbacks for, uh, the Teamsters working there.
Related Coverage
Anchorage keeps blowing past overtime budgets stuck on a 2010 baseline
Anchorage has spent 51% of its 2026 budget with 58% of the year gone, but OMB Director Ona Brouse told the Assembly Budget and Finance Committee on Thursday that police, fire and transit overtime remain over budget and the alcohol tax fund shows 107% spent because of accounting mismatches.
