Hot on the heels of yesterday’s dismaying news concerning the GOP-lead State Senate budget resolution that withdrew state support of the MTA capital fund, authority Chairman and CEO Joe Lhota struck back. In a pointedly-worded letter to Dean Skelos, the New York State Senate Majority Leader, Lhota urged the Senate Republicans to reverse course and questioned their commitment to both transit and growing jobs in New York State.
Noting that the request to increase the MTA’s bonding limit as well as a direct grant from the State were included in the Governor’s budget and the Assembly’s plan, Lhota bemoaned the Senate resolution. “These items, along with approval of the MTA’s proposed amendment to the 2010-2014 Capital Program, are essential to allow us to continue to make the important transportation investments that the twelve counties of the Metropolitan Transportation New York Region desperately need.”
In the letter, Lhota, a former Giuliani confidante, hit back at the GOP over their claims of job creation. Transit, he said, is what spurs job growth. It helps ferry New Yorkers to their jobs, and by purchasing services and supplies from New York businesses, it keeps the upstate economy afloat and growing as well. “Over 80% of commuters into the NY central business district during peak hours use the MTA systems, and MTA’s 2012 capital program alone will account for over 20% of New York City construction jobs,” he wrote. “Furthermore, the Capital Program’s continued purchase of rail cars, buses and other equipment provides significant economic benefit to New Yorkers far beyond the New York Metropolitan region.”
Behind this game of Russian roulette Skelos is playing with the MTA’s capital budget, the Senate GOP is also putting billions in federal loans at risk as well. The MTA is currently negotiating with the feds for a $3 billion loan that will push East Side Access and Phase 1 of the Second Ave. Subway to completion. The loan is contingent on a fully funded capital plan, and New York, says Lhota, must show “an equal commitment to maintaining the transit network’s new and existing infrastructure.”
That commitment is currently absent. “If the Senate’s budget resolution were enacted,” he wrote, “it would clearly call into question the State’s commitment to its transit system and will jeopardize the loan and our ability to complete East Side Access and the current phase of the Second Avenue Subway as well.” Of course, decades of divestment by the state and outright theft of supposedly dedicated transit dollars should have called into question that commitment long ago, but Lhota has to play politics here as well.
In its coverage of this looming fiasco, Streetsblog noted how GOP Senators in Albany will hold transit hostage in exchange for road dollars, and that is exactly what I noted last night. Upstate representatives claim the MTA does nothing for their districts when, in fact, these capital dollars support manufacturing in upstate towns. And so we will wait. We’ll wait for the horse-trading and the political machinations.
As I said last night, though, New York City and New York State cannot afford this game. If the Republicans dig on on spurious claims of being unaware of what the capital money will go toward, if they do not budget, the MTA could lose out on billions of dollars that are designed to help expand our transit network. That is a fate we should not and do not want to contemplate.
44 comments
Well, it is a fact that road maintenance has suffered from the same debt policy as transit maintenance. But State Senate didn’t put a fix for the roads into the budget with transit. It did neither.
Because doing both would require more taxes and/or less spending on other things.
I didn’t read the other thread, but if this is a straight upstate vs downstate fight, why does upstate keep winning these things? The commute to Manhattan should be more important for the suburban counties than repairing upstate roads, and almost two thirds of the state’s population lives in the NYC metropolitan area.
Cause the power base is out of wack with where most residents live.
It is also because the state Senate and Assembly districts are a complete fiction when compared to the actual population centers of the state.
The city does not get its correct share of representation in the Assembly and especially the Senate.
The other reason- the GOP are just plain stupid, hateful individuals.
What is the city’s correct share? There is no expectation that individual cities should be represented in the state government, for better or for worse.
(I’d really just prefer to see the whole districting idea abolished anyway.)
So then the state is responsible only for the non-city portion of the state?
No, I don’t mean that. Legislative apportionment is (or can be) done without regard for localities.
Localities exist at the pleasure of the legislature anyway.
NYC and downstate together elect enough Republikan troglodytes to keep upstate senators fairly powerful.
And, they all probably sincerely think – or at least know their constituents sincerely think – their regions are what holds the state up. As if high-unemployment, low-productivity upstate is holding the lazy city on its broad, white shoulders.
Dems fall into the trap of believing that myth, too. It’s just “common sense” that money flows out of rural and suburban areas to big cities. For whatever reason, Dems won’t address it even to win elections.
Of course, the metro area has a lot of money in it. At the same time, the metro area has its own sink holes. Poverty was concentrated in big parts of the inner city, and one cop told me that 1/7th of the city’s population was on welfare. Considering NY is more generous than a lot of places, people actually moved here for social services. If the city itself push harder to get these people working (low income people could replace illegal immigrants on many of the jobs they do) there could be big drops on the expenditures on social services and more money could be devoted to transit. NYC and the MTA have enough access to resources, the problem with them is how they allocate them.
There is a massive, fucked up gerrymander in place in the State Senate, so that downstate residents are in districts 10% larger than upstate residents, and upstate Democrats are carved up among districts so that they can’t elect anyone — except for one each in Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Rochester if we’re lucky.
If not for the deliberate, anti-democratic, unconstitutional gerrymandering, the Republicans in the State Senate would be gone.
Upstate Democrats would make sure we got our rural roads and city streets fixed (which the Republican State Senators don’t bother to do), and would probably get us some more train service. Republicans just steal money and give it to their cronies, as far as I can tell. There used to be some good ones a LONG time ago.
I’m an upstater (Buffalo native) who moved downstate years ago and has lived in NYC for a long time. So I see both sides of these debates.
I’m totally in favor of strong state support for transit, but the idea that the support of the MTA has any significant impact on “growing the upstate economy” is laughable. Upstaters are often told to appreciate all the supposed benefits they receive just by virtue of sharing a state with the “capital of the world,” but you’ll have to forgive them if they have difficulty seeing those benefits, since they experience firsthand an economy that has been cratering for decades even as NYC has grown. The fact is that they are two different economies with different needs and little connection between the two.
And as for Ed’s comment that upstate always wins these debates, that’s ludicrous. The positions of power in Albany are invariably held by downstaters. Governor (Cuomo, downstater), Senate Majority Leader (Skelos, downstater), Senate Minority Leader (Sampson, downstater), Assembly Speaker (Silver, downstater). And until Gillibrand came along, downstate has traditionally held both US Senate seats as well. These leadership positions in Albany set the agenda and the set the policy, and as a result they are always down from a downstate perspective. The Upstate region has almost half the state’s population, but it’s representation in Albany (particularly in leadership positions), is far out of proportion with what it should be.
What do you think the economy in upstate New York would look like if New York City were to be its own political entity? I’m not saying this to be a troll or anything; I’m just wondering your take on it.
My take is that without New York City, upstate would be one of the more struggling areas in the country.
“What do I think it would look like?” Not much worse than it already is.
There’s no “would be” about it. It already is one of the most struggling areas in the country. If NYC helps out upstate so much, how could anyone possibly tell?
Downstaters like to say how much their tax dollars “keep upstate afloat.” But it’s not afloat. It sank years ago, when manufacturing left.
Those of us from western NY have looked across the river as neighboring Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe of southern Ontario (much closer than NYC) have boomed in recent decades, while upstate NY has crumbled. Personally, I feel the counties of western New York would be far better off if they were integrated into the closer Ontario economy rather than the New York State economy. Not that that has any chance of happening.
I agree with that characterization, but downstaters are not wrong to complain about $15B leaving the city when we have our own yearly problems staying afloat. They might not be aware of how dire things are up there though.
Some of that might be due to the fact that Toronto roughly fills NYC’s space in the Canadian economy. The Golden Horseshoe is Canada’s Connecticut and New Jersey.
No doubt about it though: NAFTA really should have been an opportunity for upstate manufacturing, for everything from semiconductors to biomedical. Instead, Texas and Kalifornia got the bulk of the benefits of those industries, even though upstate is within a day’s drive of the biggest consumer market in the USA – and the Golden Horsehoe, and parts of the Midwest, etc.. Companies like Dell should have been upstate.
The state really screwed you guys on that one.
I’m going to agree and disagree with Matt, and part of the problem is that upstate NY is a big region. Buffalo’s econony is different from Central New York’s (Ithaca, Elmira, Syracuse, Binghamton, Cortland, Auburn, etc) which is different from Albany’s, which is different from Northern New York.
The biggest employers in Central New York are the universities and colleges. Its the source of income for those areas. Downstate contributes in the sense that many of its students go upstate to study. (I’m from Queens and I went to Cornell). There are some government contractors in Syracuse and Binghamton like Lockheed Martin.
Albany the biggest employer is the state government. In part because of nano tech research, a number of tech companies are building or expanding their facilities their, including IBM, Samsung, and Intel.
There are towns in Northern NY where the economy is based on prisons housing people from downstate!
So with all this said, in any real since of the word, almost NO upstaters are employed by companies that do manufacturing for the MTA. Most of the parts are made overseas, they just do final assembly either in Hornell or Yonkers (In Westchester, which is downstate). So looking from the point of view from someone who had a life upstate, whether the MTA gets more or less funding will not affect anyone’s employment upstate.
What does affect them, since they live there, are their own local roads. So they are asking for their roads to be funded, if the MTA gets funded. Why would they support MTA funding and not fight to get their own interests represented? It makes no sense.
One of the biggest problems in Upstate is that we’re not well-connected to downstate, or to Toronto, or to anywhere else, any more.
Upstate and downstate were tied together by the Erie Canal, then by the railroads. Then by the highway system. Gas prices are making the highways a less viable means of transportation, and nobody seems to be willing to actually put the money in to restore fast train service west of the Hudson.
If we didn’t have the god-damned Republicans (and Democrats who act like Republicans) to deal with, I expect we could cut a deal where downstate gets MTA funding and upstate gets high-speed intercity rail to New York City from everywhere. But, that’s not what we’re dealing with right now…
As for local roads, the Republicans have shown no interest in funding those, and were actually responsible for cutting local road funding about two decades back.
BTW, I’m not just trying to be argumentative here.
Like I said, I’ve lived in NYC for over a decade. I have a monthly Metrocard and use transit every day. I read this blog because I’m interested in good public transit too.
It’s just that when stories like this come up, I often see upstate tend to be demonized. Commenters say that upstate people and politicians are ignorant of NYC and how important transit is to the NYC economy. And in my experience, that is true, but it is also true that downstaters are often ignorant of upstate (its geography, its population, demographics, economy, and culture). And so they tend to stereotype it as a land of conservative hicks and farmers who live off the largesse of NYC and are lucky to share the same state. That’s a pretty inaccurate view.
Upstate is one of the more struggling areas of the country. Perhaps the most struggling of any region of that size and population, at least outside the South.
But they won’t blame themselves for how it got that way. It’s not quite downstate’s fault. All the effort they’ve put into getting pork from us could have gone into actually doing what elected officials theoretically should do: looking after the locals’ needs and trying to make them work in the wider framework of the state. They should have been fighting for a regulatory model that works upstate.
Of course, it requires loosening the grip on the leash around NYC’s neck too. More than anything, neither party in Albany wants to do that.
How do you know they haven’t fought for a regulatory network more suitable for the needs of upstate. It’s difficult to achieve when the “three men in a room” model of running things in Albany, especially when all three of those men are from downstate. As a result, we get a one-size-fits-all regulatory model that is generally tailored to the needs of the downstate region.
As just one example: in NYS spending on social programs such as Medicaid are among the highest in the nation, and that type of policy is fine for wealthy counties such as those in the downstate region. And downstaters probably view that social spending as a benefit that upstate receives. But the state only covers a portion, and mandates the counties pay the rest, which in the case of many upstate counties, is far out of their means. The money to cover these mandates has to com out of local property taxes, and since property values are much lower upstate than downstate, that is the reason why upstate counties always have the highest property tax rates in the nation.
Just one example of how sharing a state with NYC makes it difficult for the upstate region to achieve a regulatory framework suitable to its own growth. It’s not all about which region is contributing how many tax dollars.
Three men in a room still exists, right? They certainly aren’t overthrowing their man because he’s terrible at representing their interests. (Granted, there may not be a single Republikan who does represent upstate’s interests, and probably few Dems either.)
I don’t deny that problem exists, but I think you’re misstating the dynamic. Who benefits: bureaucrats, HMOs (for some programs), connected pols, etc.. It’s the voters who are screwed, but they’re the ones who keep reelecting these pols. And why are they the highest in the nation anyway? It ain’t because we’re the oldest, fattest, or poorest. We’re just the most corrupt, or at least nearly.
Meanwhile, pols could have been smart in the 1970s and tried to capture at least things like the nascent semiconductor industry. We knew then we were going to be more expensive, we knew that we had to replace low-value goods like glass, paper, and even air conditioners with higher-value, more sophisticated ones. New York State even had the economic base to do that (to some extent, it still does, though the ship as mostly sailed off to China now) as well as some geographic advantages. Instead, they were stupid and arrogant.
I don’t think it’s a matter of sharing with NYC that’s the problem. The entire institution of “Albany” is stale. We benefit at least as much as upstate from a generally modernized regulatory environment. It’s not a zero-sum game.
I could see where there is a dynamic similar to the one in France. A lot of French policy revolves around favoring the metropolitan (Paris region) economy. But that can certainly be overcome, and in fact is across the English Channel in the UK, where London and its surroundings make up a bigger percentage of the UK population than Paris does for France.
Manufacturing as a percentage of people employed will never be what it once was. Industrial upstate towns where in their heyday after world war II, when Europe, Japan, and China werre devastated, leaving the US as the only totally functional industrial country. Now many countries are industrialized. Also mechanization has reduced the number of people needed in manufacturing.
But I wouldn’t say unemployment upstate is high. A lot of people left, so unemployment is much less than it would be if people had tried to stay after manufacturing went down.
Well, no kidding. That ship sailed long ago. Had they been smart, they could have maintained a strong manufacturing base and some entrepreneurship surrounding that base. That’s kind of how Silicon Valley formed.
You’re probably right about unemployment. A lot of people left, and a lot more are probably discouraged.
“(Granted, there may not be a single Republikan who does represent upstate’s interests, and probably few Dems either.) ”
This is pretty much correct. Andrew Cuomo sold us out by signing the evil Republican State Senate gerrymander, designed to keep the worthless Republicans in power in the State Senate so as to prevent us from having anyone representing our interests. Meanwhile the Assembly is controlled by Silver, who just doesn’t care about upstate either.
“The entire institution of “Albany” is stale.”
Seen “The Albany Project” website? A hell of a lot of people agree with you.
As a life long downstater, I’d say that without NYC, upstate would be in the same shape, agree with Matt. The main difference is that upstate would be getting federal $ instead of state $ (passed through from NYC) as its means of support.
One point is that upstate would quite likely be seeing the same boom from natural gas shale as Pennsylvania is seeing, and in general resource exploitation in the city’s watershed would likely be much more aggressive.
It’s more like a poot than a boom in PA. They’re expected to add about 635 jobs per 100,000 people in 2012. Even New York is projected (NY is #3 on this list, PA #5) to pull off about 706.
So what you’re saying is that today they’re only poisoning the wells (literally) outside the NY watershed, whereas if the honchos of Rochester ran the show they’d be poisoning the wells everywhere. Glad to know the city can be of service to the future of the water quality of the residents of the Catskills.
Yep. Here in Ithaca, we’re doing whatever we can to pass local bans. The oil shale is actually a big pump-and-dump investment scam (there just isn’t that much natural gas there, and they’re inflating the numbers massively), so if we can just keep the well-poisoners out for a couple more years, we’re good.
Otherwise, Finger Lakes agriculture will be ruined. Pennsylvania agriculture already got wrecked.
The issue of up vs down state notwithstanding, the potential for employment – in other words, revenues – in the NYC metro area would seem to be far greater than it is upstate.
If there’s another boom in the financial sector, it’s going to translate into many more metro area jobs. Lower transportation costs means more disposable income spread elsewhere throughout the economy. That will mean a bigger pot of revenues for everyone to draw from – both up and down state.
If the Port of Brooklyn is developed to support the larger ships that will be coming through the Panama Canal – for example by a freight tunnel to Jersey – that will also translate into many more jobs. If NYC’s infrastructure and mass transit substantively improve, it will translate to many more jobs. More jobs means more tax revenues.
Can the same be said about upstate? If we built more bridges and tunnels upstate, would the state economy dramatically improve? I don’t see how. If we built a bullet train from Erie to Albany, would a quarter million new jobs line that corridor? I doubt it. If we rebuilt the Rochester subway, would the coffers in Albany swell? No … it’s fair to say they’d probably only shrink from the cost.
But the investment in transportation in NYC is qualitatively different. How many manufacturing jobs have left NYC because the cost of getting raw materials in, and products out, made business prohibitive? How many service companies left NYC because getting to and from the airports was, compared to many US cities, profoundly inconvenient?
When it comes to spending tax dollars, doesn’t sending money from Albany to NYC give the state of New York the biggest bang for the buck? Where’s Albany’s biggest return on investment?
NYC doesn’t want heavy industry. City planners would prefer to deal with industries like finance, media, education, and tourism, as its easier to get wealthy people to live next to these industries. No one with money wants to live near heavy industry or shipping. And real estate is the industry NYC loves above all others.
The Port Authority, the owner of all air and seaports in the metro area, has decided that shipping and the remaining heavy industry in the area belong in New Jersey, and that New York is more for the above industries.
Areas like upstate NY do have economic and national importance. There’s farmland, timber, etc upstate. Grocery stores do not create food out of thin air, it comes from farms. As for factories, most companies these days would never put a factory in NYC, where real estate is too high. The Albany region has IBM Microprocessor plans, and recently Intel and Samsung have announced a decision to place plants there (SUNY Albany has a nanotech center that does a lot of research)
The other thing is, upstate GOP reps were not saying they did not want the MTA to get funding. They were saying unless their districts got funding for roads, that they would prevent the MTA from getting its funding. Why would they fund something that does not employ people in upstate NY? I lived in Ithaca, NY for years before graduating from Cornell University. I lived in Cortland, NY for a year. The biggest contribution NYC area makes to Central New York is sending students to various upstate universities. If it wasn’t for Cornell, various SUNY’s, and a few liberal arts colleges Central New York would have no money.
Uh, because it’s not theirs? They aren’t funding it. We’re funding it. They’re taking it and giving some of it back to us.
And that’s a downright moronic attitude anyway. They want to starve the beast, except they expect to keep drawing milk from its paps. They aren’t just moochers, they’re stupid moochers.
There is no state in this country where the state budget is all about one city or one district.
Just as not all the state’s budget is about NYC, ditto for federal spending. Compromises have to be made in order to get what you want. If you don’t compromise, you won’t get anything.
And the MTA, as a state company, belongs to the state. NYC, in exchange for an albany bail out, allowed the state to take over administration of NYC Transit. You might blame the city government (or at least the administration that allowed this to happen) for even doing this.
But hey, NYC government is welcome to try to undo this agreement, and be fully responsible for NYC Transit.
But my guess is that no mayor wants the responsibility!
But last I checked, since the state taxes all residents of NYS, then all residents of each county have a say in government. So residents of upstate counties have every right to fight for highway funding.
And come to think of it, the MTA is a ridiculous scam anyway. I was recently on the LIRR. There is absolutely no reason to have ticket agents with the LIRR Vending Machines available. I’m sure this alone wouldn’t solve the MTA’s financial problems, but laying off stay they quite clearly do not need would be a big help. MTA staff are expensive not only because of salary, they get good pension and benefits so someone could be doing quite well living off the MTA till they are over 100 if they live long enough.
While they are getting rid of the LIRR ticket sales clerks, get rid of the NYC TA token booth clerks. The MTA needs to do more real estate leasing on the real estate it has, and find ways to get more money on the assets it has.
The MTA may need to raise the base fares. They love to raise unlimited metrocards, but they didn’t raise the base fares. Raise them again.
I’m sure it hasn’t occurred to anybody at the MTA to reduce the number of ticket agents and station agents. What a novel idea!
Since unlimited fares were first introduced in 1998, the base fare has gone up in 2003 and 2009. The multi-ride bonus was also reduced in 2008 and 2010. The fare is scheduled to go up again next year, probably to $2.50.
Maybe you’d prefer to go back to the pre-1997 fare structure: $1.50 per subway ride, $1.50 per bus ride (no free transfer between the two), no bulk discounts, no unlimited cards of any sort.
Of course its occurred to the MTA to eliminate ticket agents. They’d have a very nasty fight with the unions, and politicians from downstate would likely oppose this. It would take a lot to get the MTA to address overstaffing, but this will have to be done.
Uh, you know, eliminating capital funds might also rile downstate politicians…legitimately, even. At least excess operating expenses are a legitimate target as far as good governance is concerned – it saves money for the present and the future. But making life shittier for the future, as eliminating capital funding does, is inexcusable.
(Again, the reason they take this approach is obvious: taking away operating funds translates into a hit at the TWU, a powerful constituency of people who vote Republikan often enough. Republikans pretty much embody all the evils they say they’re against, and then some.)
The GOP doesn’t even seem to be after the over-staffing. They went after the capital funding. The over-staffing is a legitimate target, but it votes. And since it often drives and lives in the suburbs, it probably votes Republikan often enough.
First of all, it’s NYC that doesn’t have a say proportional to its size. But I didn’t say anything in opposition to people having a say. Hell, I think they should have more say, not less say. If they did have more say, NYC could have a more equitable deal.
And even if you think there doesn’t need to be more equability, the idea that the parasite should kill its host is bad for the parasite. Just what good could choking the MTA do for upstate? It just weakens the city’s ability to even provide milk. They are just being malicious.
It’s this attitude (regarding upstate NY as a parasite on NYC) that I find arrogant, condescending, and despicable.
Again, if upstate benefits so much from its ties to NYC, how can you possibly tell?
Upstate doesn’t want NYC’s condescension, its pity, or its charity. It wants economic growth of its own, and jobs. It wants to stand on its own two feet, like it used it.
It’s also not what I said. It’s Upstate (mainly Republikan*) politicians who are parasitic, not Upstate itself. The most you can blame Upstate’s people for is some ignorance about what’s really going on.
However, you can despise that attitude when it actually arises all you want, but you should at least be understanding about it. It’s understandable why a layperson would see it that way, given the financial and economic facts.
* And, quite frankly, Republikans are parasitic almost everywhere.
I don’t think Upstate “benefits” from the status quo. I think crooked Upstate pols benefit, and Upstate’s people get shafted…more than NYC’s people, in a sense.
What we need up here is rural broadband. Why? Because this would expose people living in rural areas, who currently get only biased right-wing news sources, to what’s really going on. The Republicants would be voted out pretty quickly after they were exposed.
Everywhere with broadband is turning anti-Republican. Not just Ithaca, but basically every city.
The GOP was responsible for cutting the local road funding in the first place, under Pataki, IIRC. Hypocrites.
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