Earlier this morning, as the MTA Board voted to approve a lesser fare hike, many of the board members said their farewell to outgoing CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander. As the MTA gears up for life after Sander, rumors are swirling in Albany surrounding the future head of the MTA. For months, we’ve heard Marc Shaw’s name pop up as the possible replacement. Not so fast, say the Senate Dems.
According to Post columnist Frederic U. Dicker, the Senate Democrats considering Shaw’s potential nominee to be “laughable.” According to Dicker’s sources, Shaw tried to undermine the Senate’s power by changing the language and audit requirements in the MTA bill. As such, reports Daily News writer Elizabeth Benjamin, they don’t trust him to guide the authority as they see fit and probably wouldn’t approve him as head.
I have another problem with Shaw: He was the one in charge of the MTA when Gov. Pataki forced the agency to pay for everything on credit. From 1996-2001, the years during which the MTA built up this massive debt they now have to down, Shaw did little to stop it. Should we really trust him to front the agency through a financial crisis of his making?
4 comments
I have a scary feeling that Paterson will try to give the post to someone in Rockland or Orange county, as a peace-offering of sorts, to quash their attempt to get themselves out of the MTA.
I doubt that. Orange and Rockland don’t have that kind of political clout. Plus, who in either of those counties has the experience necessary to run an Authority the size of the MTA. It’s one of the only Authorities with inter-state jurisdiction, through it’s alliance with ConnDOT to run the New Haven Line and Branches of Metro-North. The political and technocratic know-how to pull off the job even marginally successfully is huge.
Just look at some of the huge duds the MTA has had over the years. Besides, how long is the person even going to be there? Patterson is out in early 2011 if he doesn’t get his poll numbers out of the septic tank (which is below the toilet level of poll numbers where most politician’s poll numbers usually reside).
The only last resort I could see is bringing back Ravitch.
Re: bringing back Ravitch.
Brilliant.
[…] was just yesterday afternoon when I wrote how the Senate Democrats will probably not approve Marc Shaw as the head of the MTA. So how does Gov. David Paterson respond to this political threat? By […]