Editorial of the Day: On pointless comptroller reports

Remember that Captain Obvious report buried on a Sunday by Comptrollers John Liu and Thomas DiNapoli that highlighted how the MTA handles service changes and track work? It seems that some folks did not take too kindly to Liu and DiNapoli’s blustering attempt at a blatant headline grab. The Daily News’ editorial board, for one, found the report misguided and petty.

Here’s how they put it:

The press release trumpeted that the state and city controllers had conducted their first joint audit in more than a decade. Thomas DiNapoli (Albany) and John Liu (New York) had trained their collective investigative firepower on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, their highly paid publicity aides announced. Gee, they must have discovered something huge. Right?

No, not exactly.

The report released Sunday by DiNapoli and Liu was more like a junior high school research paper than a serious examination of the state of mass transit in New York City. Did you know that auditors visited 39 subway stations where service had been diverted for track repairs? And did you know, horror of horrors, that the transit authority posted no more than 20 signs in each station alerting riders to the disruption? Well, now you do, thanks to the crusading of DiNapoli and Liu, who want every straphanger to know whose side they are on.

While this is one of the oldest PR tricks in the book, rarely have two such high officials attempted it with such feeble results. It goes this way: Zero in on something that annoys riders, such as service disruptions for repairs. Then count up the numbers and look for anything that suggests the MTA is bollixing up the work.

The News, not exactly a friend of the MTA’s over the years, has a better solution: Focus on the big picture and show how “the MTA is struggling to complete necessary repairs and system upgrades without proper state funding.” The paper is probably being a little tougher on Liu and DiNapoli than they need to be, but their point — that nothing new comes out of the comptrollers’ offices — is one I’ve made before. All we hear about from them are issues the MTA has already vowed to address or institutional problems that transcend an audit.

Once upon a time, the Citizens Budget Commission explored how funding from Albany for the MTA’s capital plans had dried up over the course of the Pataki Administration. If DiNapoli and Liu want to make waves, they should conduct that forensic audit of the MTA’s books while looking at Albany’s support as well. Perhaps then they would find real savings and real reform rather than the complaint that stations which see a few thousand riders per day have only 20 service change posters instead of 50.