It serves no useful purpose to arouse alarm among commuters, because NJ Transit manages to do this almost daily without any help.

But in just a few hours Friday, a former member of senior management, fired for reasons his superiors cannot clarify, depicted NJT as an agency of rapacious incompetence, run by political hacks who have transformed the country's third-largest commuter railroad into a "toxic environment" that has destroyed morale and compromised safety.

Todd Barretta was hired in March to oversee "the development and implementation of systems and strategies to ensure corporate compliance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements, internal policies and risk management plans." 

If Chief Compliance Officer is not on the top rung of the organization chart, it's close to it.

Then he was fired two weeks ago, for reasons that are neither specific nor consistent.

But in testimony given to a joint legislative committee, Barretta gave us a disturbing peek behind the curtain - the kind that demands further examination.

He said he witnessed instructors giving employees the answers to safety-training tests. He observed potential misuse of Sandy recovery money. He revealed that the railroad is likely to miss a federally-mandated deadline to install a safety system that might have prevented the fatal crash in Hoboken. He pointed out the agency's lack of compliance with family leave laws.