On Friday afternoon, I linked to a Sewell Chan piece on The Times City Room blog about the impending cut backs and fare hikes the MTA may soon have to enact. As the day dragged on, Chan’s piece generated over 180 comments on The Times’ website, but as one of my readers noted, these readers are woefully uninformed about the state of the MTA.
Let’s take a peek at some of the more egregiously ill-informed comments, starting with comment 8:
It’s because there workers demand raises every year since they are part of a union, they are entitled to a raise. That’s what the last hike was about not our budget problem but giving the workers more money.
Didnt they just have a billion dollar surplus?!? What happened to that money?
LIES!!! There is no fiscal crisis in the MTA. The MTA runs 2 sets of books, as proven by State Comptroller Alan Hevesi in 2002. They hide millions of dollars in this second accounting ledger so they can cry “Bankruptcy!” and squeeze millions of more dollars from the state and city budgets.
The MTA has been paying fraudulent LIRR disability cases and inflated overtime/social security benefits. What happened to the surplus a few years back? What happened to the second set of accounting books
My personal favorite, e-mailed to me by fellow transit supporter Chris, at Comment 130:
This is RIDICULOUS!!!!!!! These idiots decide to “invest” the money into dangerous and ultimately pathetically awful securities….actually, more like “get-rich-quick” schemes for the highest levels of our society….you know, those geniuses who know better than us morons…..and now we have to foot the bill? Why cant Peter Kalikow, in all his brilliance take a pay cut, huh? He makes upwards of 400K for what? To bury the MTA in debt and have to impose these hardships on us? They should be dragged out into the streets and each given 100 lashes. Then they can keep their jobs. I bet you it wont happen again after that!
In case anyone has forgotten, Kalikow last served as head of the MTA in 2007. To say that anyone who doesn’t know that hasn’t been paying attention would be a gross understatement.
If there’s any doubt about who is winning the PR game, I think this wraps it up in favor of the anti-congestion pricing, anti-tolling, anti-MTA crowd in the New York State legislature who would rather cut their own arteries than fund transit. People are hung up on six-year-old scandals, on misunderstandings surrounding MTA finances, even on how the tolling plan would work. And of course, some people don’t even know who’s in charge of the MTA.
When the MTA votes to enact its Doomsday budget in ten days, people will again protest the MTA. They’ll call for the heads of Dale Hemmerdinger and Elliot Sander. Again, transit advocates who have failed so far will attempt to educate the public, but the public just isn’t listening. They’ve made up their minds about the MTA, as at the City Room readers show, no amount of facts, truth or logic will convince them otherwise.
The MTA is not efficient, and its history as way too many separate entities has never been more glaringly obvious. A new public benefit corporation built from the bottom up with streamlined operations and inter-agency lines of communication would be far better for the City of New York in 2009. But right now, we’re stuck with what’s there, and whether New Yorkers know and understand it, when Albany fails to act, the state legislature will have won the anti-tolling war, but they will lose the mass transit battle for all New Yorkers.
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