That’s right! It’s the MTA.
Per Pete Donohue, the cash-strapped agency needs to borrow $600 million to cover its operating expenses for the rest of the year. While Albany passed a rescue package last month before devolving into chaos, the MTA won’t see any of that money until the end of the year, and the transit authority must continue to pay out its expenses. Donohue has more:
The MTA has to borrow a mountain of cash because the state won’t fork over the agency’s transit funds until the end of the year, officials said. Adding insult to injury, the MTA will have to pay the state a fee as high as $5 million when the agency borrows the $600 million needed to pay expenses, officials said…
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority expects to pay $2 million more in interest and other expenses. The Catch-22 stems mostly from the Legislature taking so long to adopt the MTA bailout, which contained a new payroll tax, and subsidies for buses, subways and commuter trains.
That’s brilliant. Stall well beyond a deadline for the rescue plan; pass something that doesn’t really solve any long-term problems; and without the money while charging high interest until the end of the year. Mass transit funding in New York is broken, and this is just another indication of that sad reality.
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The State Legislature (both houses, both parties) is an unsalvageable wreck. The elected officials care more about self aggrandizement and personal profiting off their positions than actually doing any work to help their constituents.
Logic, common sense, following even popular opinion have no place in the halls of the Capitol.
Transit is just one issue of many where the elected politicians stand on the opposite side form the majority of New Yorkers. Instead our politicians stand with their financial backers (as one would logically expect), who make up a very small minority of state residents.
Until there is real reform, or even possibly a revolution, the people of the state of New York are going to continue to be screwed over by their elected officials. The biggest problem is that these very individuals that need to be shoved out of power, along with their financiers, are the people who control the process to reform the system.
/end rant
Remember back when all the politicians stalling said the deadline was artificial and didn’t mean anything?
Well, to me at least, it looks like that deadline had a $5M price-tag.
Shame on them.
That was Malcolm Smith that said that. I really can’t understand how this man was elected in the first place. I have met him and he comes across as a unintellignet scam artist in person much like Al Sharpton his biggest supporter.
When are the next elections? Can New Yorkers have a vote of no confidence in their legislature?