Bob Mirabito was planning to pack up his family and leave Baton Rouge in spring 2013 when, on a whim, he answered an ad for the interim CEO position of the Capital Area Transit System. As Business Report details in a feature from the current issue, the then-58-year-old executive was unemployed at the time, having been laid off months earlier from his job as chief information officer at Baton Rouge Radiology Group, and he was scouting around for a new opportunity. Running a bus system wasn’t something he’d done before, but he figured it was a short-term gig that might buy him some time to determine his next move.
He submitted an application and didn’t give it a second thought.
“I really forgot about it until [reporter] Rebekah Allen from The Advocate called congratulating me on being one of two finalists,” he says. “I was floored.”
Mirabito got the interim job and eventually became permanent CEO. In the 27 months since, he has brought a level of professionalism and fiscal accountability to CATS that was sorely lacking. His fans praise him for uncovering and addressing financial corruption, cleaning up the system’s sloppy books, and coming up with a plan to introduce new routes and upgrade the system. So pleased was the CATS board with his performance, it gave him a 19% raise earlier this year, increasing his compensation package to more than $175,000 and making him one of the highest-paid employees in city-parish government.
“He is doing an excellent job,” says CATS board member Jim Brandt, who spent his career running government watchdog groups. “He has brought in systems, good people and created a culture of performance. This stuff is not sexy, but it really has made a difference in how the system operates.”
But Mirabito—who is Yankee-born, came of age in the Midwest and built his career in corporate America—has his detractors. He can be cocky, by his own admission, and abrasive by the standards of the smooth-talking Deep South. Because of what he has done at CATS and, arguably, how he has done it, Mirabito has stepped on toes and made people mad—most notably the system’s employee union. Its leadership accuses him of being polarizing and divisive in ongoing contract negotiations. One Metro Council member has even called for his resignation.
How he handles the union dispute may be his biggest challenge yet in a tenure that has been marked by a series of trials by fire. Those who know Mirabito predict he will weather the storm, based on his skills as a good businessman and shrewd negotiator. But it seems the bar against which he is measured is higher now that his salary is, too. Before he was a rookie who surprised everyone with some early wins. Now, he’s earning a hefty paycheck, and with it has come more notoriety.
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