MTA officials are in a bit of a bind. They are routinely vilified for the fare hike and service cuts proposal by a public that doesn’t understand how the Board must operate and by a press that does.
Basically, the Board has to pass a balanced budget. Otherwise, they’ll face some civil penalties — but not jail time — and the state legislature probably wouldn’t approve it.
The MTA Board members don’t want to have to cut service and raise fares. They would rather get the money they need from congestion pricing plans and commuter taxes, from city and state contributions and from federal grants. That money however just isn’t coming, and so the Board has turned to the one tool at its command: service and the fare.
The Board members and MTA bigwigs too are aware of this problem. To that end, Hilary Ring, the MTA’s director of government affairs. At a recent public hearing — the first since the Doomsday scenario was unveiled — Ring urged the public to protest vocally the fare hikes and service cuts. Get in touch with your elected officials, he urged. Tell them to fund the MTA.
Pete Donohue and Leo Standora were there to report on the hearing for the Daily News:
Describing the cutback package as “terrible,” MTA director of government affairs Hilary Ring urged people at a public forum to express their anger at public hearings in January.
“Please come,” he appealed to the crowd of about 125 at Swinging Sixties Senior Center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last night. “The only way it’s not going to be implemented is if you express outrage.”
“The budget we presented to the board is not the budget we want to see adopted,” he said. “We had to make very tough choices. We don’t want to make these cuts. We think the state and city should increase their contributions to us.”
To mince words, the city and state have pulled the rug out from under the MTA, and if anyone should bear the brunt of the public anger, it is those officials. They won’t fund our mass transit; they won’t embrace alternate and out-of-the-box revenue-generating and environmentally-friendly schemes. They will just sit back and criticize an agency with its back to the wall.
So get there and get your voice heard. As Peter Finch screamed in Network, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more.” Tell that to Mayor Mike as he seeks his third term.