The highest paid employee across the Central Ohio Transit Authority is, predictably, its president and CEO. The second-highest paid employee? A vehicle maintenance worker who racked up nearly $230,000 in overtime pay in 2025 alone.
That employee is Keith White, whose gross pay of $352,904 last year is raising eyebrows on social media. According to payroll data published by The Columbus Dispatch, White built on his base salary of around $66,000 with overtime pay to the tune of $228,000, a $550 bonus, and $57,000 in miscellaneous pay like unused holiday and sick time.
What does more than $200,000 in overtime look like in practice? Zero days off, according to a member of White’s union.
“He doesn’t take sick time. He doesn’t take vacation time. He doesn’t take his personal days. He literally works every day,” explained Bobby Berryhill, financial secretary for the Transport Workers Union of America Local 208, the union representing COTA’s transit workers.
Berryhill told The Columbus Dispatch that White, who’s worked for COTA for 18 years, hasn’t called out of work for any reason in the past 10 years. At the end of each year, White is paid out for all the accrued vacation and sick time he didn’t take.
“He’s an incredible employee, incredible worker. He’s a great resource for people under him,” Berryhill said.
Overboard on overtime
Beyond White’s indefatigable work ethic, there are a few key systems at play in COTA that made his six-figure overtime pay possible.
Through COTA’s contract with TWU Local 208, vehicle maintenance workers like White can volunteer for overtime shifts and trade shifts with other employees. COTA’s maintenance shops operate 24/7 to support its fleet of buses, meaning overtime shifts are available every day and for every shift. Combined with chronic understaffing, there’s plenty of room for a worker like White to step in and pick up the slack.
“Our members earn every penny they make,” Berryhill said of COTA’s overtime system.
White isn’t alone in making big bucks from overtime work. Six other vehicle maintenance workers were also among COTA’s top 25 highest paid employees of 2025, each making at least tens of thousands of dollars through overtime. The rest of the list is rounded out by executives and directors, including president and CEO Monica Téllez-Fowler. With a gross pay of $499,114, Téllez-Fowler’s pay topped White’s by just under $150,000.
Social media responds
Across social media, users had mixed reactions to White more than tripling his base salary through overtime alone.
Many commenters on Instagram applauded White for devoting so much of his life to his work. “Personally I would like to thank Keith for [his] dedication to our meager public transit system,” one user wrote.
“What I’m reading is that COTA needs to hire more Keiths,” commented another, while criticizing the understaffing that made his overtime possible. “No one should have to work nearly every day without time off. [America] might run on Dunkin or whatever, but Columbus clearly runs on Keith.”
But others were skeptical of White’s success, including one user on X who called attention to another story out of New York City. A plumber supervisor for the city’s public housing agency named Jakub Markowski earned $465,000 in 2025, including earnings from 2,560 hours of overtime, amounting to an average of nearly 50 hours of overtime every week. That put Markowski’s earnings above those of New York City officials like the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, and even the mayor.
Markowski was running two private plumbing businesses in addition to his job with the city, raising concerns that he’d violated plumbing safety regulations and prompting investigations by both the city’s Department of Buildings and The New York Times.
But other commenters say that White’s situation isn’t comparable to Markowski’s. He’s not pulling one over on COTA, but making the most of a broken system, they say: “It’s not Keith’s fault. It’s COTA’s weak management and lack of planning,” one commenter wrote.
“If there is need for a technician you don’t make one work overtime for years, you hire another one,” they continued. “That would have certainly helped them, and the cost would have been much less than $300,000.”
But solving COTA’s understaffing crisis isn’t as simple as hiring more technicians, as spokesperson Jeff Pullin told The Columbus Dispatch. Given the highly technical nature of the role, bringing on more maintenance workers requires an “on-the-job training process,” he explained.
“That means that your experienced technicians will have to be pulled off of their work to shift their focus from servicing the fleet to training new techs,” he said. “So, you’re going to have fewer experienced technicians working on buses, and that’s going to cause more overtime.”
