The news just keeps getting worse for the MTA. Seven days after we learned that the MTA will have to indefinitely postpone planned service upgrades, the news out of Albany is rather dire for the financially-strapped organization.

According to reports from the weekend, Gov. David Patterson may be slashing $60 million in transit funds originally promised to the MTA by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. With the MTA already looking at a deficit of $200 million next year, this news bodes ill for New Yorkers. Pete Donohue has more:

Gov. Paterson has proposed slashing $60 million in transit funds that the MTA has been banking on as it confronts looming deficits, officials said Friday…

The MTA’s 2008 budget and four-year fiscal plan envision a $338 million increase in revenues from the state’s Metropolitan Mass Transportation Operating Assistance fund.

Authority officials had said they received assurances from the Spitzer administration that the funds would be provided because in the past the state had diverted mass transit money to other purposes.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky put the bad news into very simple terms. With these cuts, he said, “a fare increase next year is almost inevitable.” New Yorkers recently stuck with a fare hike and shafted by the MTA’s financial situation are not going to embrace this news.

Meanwhile, we’re once again in a situation where Albany is shafting New York City. In November, as the MTA was gearing up for the public hearing process of the fare hike procedure, representatives in Albany routinely urged the MTA to hold off on the fare hike. Just ask for more money, they urged MTA CEO and Executive Director Lee Sander. Well, unsurprisingly, now that the MTA has asked for the money, the state is rolling back financial promises. Surprise!

All of this politicking harkens back to a critique I leveled at then-Gov. Spitzer a few months ago and one that Marc Shepherd revisited in a comment on Sunday. Marc wrote:

Recall that the MTA originally planned a steeper fare hike. Governor Spitzer insisted that it be scaled back. Spitzer compounded the misery by holding the largely symbolic “base fare” at $2.00, ensuring that the beneficiaries of his generosity would be those who ride the subway the least often. Had the MTA been allowed to go forward with their original fare proposal, they’d have the resources to implement the service improvements that they’ve now been forced to postpone.

I’m willing to take that one step further. Not only would they be able to implement the service improvements, but they’d be able to stomach Albany’s reneging on its promised funds. The MTA did Albany a favor by embracing a fare hike structure that was beneficial to the tourists and sometime-subway riders who pay per ride. The agency has been repaid with less money and yet another looming fare hike. When will this cycle ever end?

It is a sad thing to sit here yearning for the days of early March. With the future of New York City’s subways laid out to us by MTA CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander, we were so full of hope and optimism. We were even discussing that famous circumferential subway line as though it would actually become a reality before 2050.

Now, we sit here, crushed by the MTA’s decisions to postpone the promised service upgrades and downgrade their target goal for on-time train performance. While the finger-pointing can go on, these feelings of despair and pessimism can be traced to four sentences in Sander’s State of the MTA address:

I have reviewed our 2008 revenues to date, which are in line with our budget projections. As a result, I will recommend to the Board that we move ahead with the service enhancements included in the financial plan.

That means $30 million dollars in new service this year. Our customers will benefit from increased service on 11 subway lines, extended and new bus routes, additional commuter rail trains and cars on LIRR and Metro-North, and improved customer communications.

On March 3, the MTA had the money. By March 24, the funds were gone, a victim of…something. On the record, MTA officials say that February and March tax revenues came in at levels lower than expected. But if February’s revenues were lower, why did Sander state unequivocally on March 3 that the MTA would begin institute service upgrades this year?

While the Bear Stearns collapse has shaken our economy, the MTA is on the verge of a $1-billion deal with Tishman Speyer for the Hudson Yards rights. They may get their congestion pricing revenue too. All signs are pointing, then, to a credibility gap. The MTA needs more accountability in its book-keeping.

Enter Christine Quinn. The New York City Council Speaker spoke out today in favor of congestion pricing. Said Quinn:

“It speaks to what we have heard from the City Council before, to real challenges in the way the MTA keeps its book or does not keep its books…To me this is a strong reason why we need congestion pricing. It’s a reason why we need a separate, sustainable revenue stream targeted at mass transit expansion in the city of New York. We need that money to go somewhere separate where the MTA’s board is not the final and only authority over it…Where there’s city representation.”

As congestion pricing comes up for a vote, I am beginning to think that city officials are finally going to start implementing closer oversight of the MTA’s finances. For the second time in as many fare hikes, what the MTA is saying and what the MTA is doing don’t match. In 2003, the MTA said they needed the hike to stay fiscally solvent when Alan Hevesi later discovered that the MTA had money to spend. This time around, the MTA promised us service upgrades that now are suspended indefinitely.

If the City Council thinks congestion pricing is the way to bring transparency to the MTA’s financial records, then it’s time to get on board. The MTA is a public benefits corporation, and it’s time to reclaim the benefits the agency should deliver to the public.