Every now and then, the MTA manages to raise the legislative ire of the people in Albany who refuse to fund the authority or take responsibility for the transit agency’s woes. Earlier this week, Michael Grynbuam, at the bottom of his Off The Rails column, reported on just one of those times. Representatives in Albany are apparently unhappy that they didn’t have enough opportunities to grandstand in front of the MTA Board speak out against the service cuts at multiple public hearings. Because the authority double-booked hearings for the same day and the same time, Board members had to choose between boroughs, and New Yorkers and their representatives could speak to only some – and not all – of the board.
To fix this problem, Assembly representative Linda B. Rosenthal has introduced a bill that would require the MTA to hold one hearing per day and to hold a hearing in every county that has a vote on the MTA Board. As Grynbaum notes, Rosenthal discovered that the MTA holds these hearings as a courtesy and isn’t required by law to receive public input, but she is undeterred in her quest. “The public was being deprived of the focused attention of every board member,” she said. “A crucial part of democracy is that your point of view is heard and is allowed to be aired.”
The MTA, meanwhile, maintains that one hearing per day will simply lead to the same people protesting at each hearing every day, a valid point based on my past experiences at the hearings. There is no word on whether the state will be willing to cover the costs of hosting 12 hearings on 12 different days, and yet again, our representatives in Albany are chasing MTA ghosts for faux-populist political points while the authority’s real economic problems continue.
6 comments
The cost of 12 hearings a day is a very valid point. Maybe it’s time we embrace technology — hold one single hearing with all board members present, with a two-way video simulcast in eleven remote locations. Then everyone should be happy (with the arrangement, not the topics under discussion).
Not a bad idea, but I dread to think of how late it would run if everybody who wanted to comment had to be compressed into one day.
Maybe implement your idea on two or three days, and start the hearings a bit earlier. And centralize speaker registration, so the same person can’t register to speak multiple times.
It’s not just cost.
It’s also time. It takes a long time to actually implement service changes. The current round of cuts is being done on fairly short notice; the hearings had to happen on a compressed timeline.
It’s also practicality. The hearings run very late – sometimes well past midnight. The board members and other MTA representatives have day jobs too. They’re not going to sit through hearings on 12 consecutive weeknights!
It costs no more to have 12 hearings on 12 days than it does on 6 days. Yes it takes time to actually implement the changes, even more time than you think. If anyone thinks these changes were prepared in 30 days as the MTA claimed in their book, it is not so. It took years to prepare all these changes. In fact, mnst of the schedules had to be completed before the hearings. There is no way so many schedules could be prepared in the three months between the hearings and the implementation. So the question arises, if this is true, how likely is the MTA to make changes to their proposals if it means redoing the schedules?
As far as the future is concerned, the number of hearings required depends on the complexity and number of changes being proposed. I remember for one of the fare increases one single hearing was held in Long Island City.
These changes were unprecedented nothing like anythong proposed before. They deserved at least 12 separate hearings for everyone to be heard. One person testified at the Brooklyn hearing that a single hearing for the borough was not even enough because of the lengthy and difficult trip requiring multiple changes by many to reach the selected location.
People deserve to be heard, and shouldn’t be required to wait three or four hours to speak especially if they pre-registered which was the case. Countless people who signed up to speak went home by 9:30 because they didn’t know if they would have to wait until midnight to speak.
The practice of allowing elected officials to speak first also has to stop. They should have to wait their turn like everyone else or else be limited to the first 15 or 30 minutes. Signing up first and then having to wait an hour and a half to speak is just wrong.
Who said the changes were prepared in 30 days?
It obviously took a lot longer than that. But on the flip side, there was also obviously enough time to change the schedules of a handful of bus routes. There probably wasn’t much time to spare, and having 12 hearings on 12 separate days would have knocked off over a week.
Holding simultaneous hearings allows more people to speak in a timely fashion than spreading them out over 12 days, since the same person can register to speak at 12 hearings on 12 days but can only register to speak at 6 hearings if they’re doubled up.
The practice of allowing elected officials to speak first has apparently already stopped – at least at the Manhattan hearing (the only one I attended), the first speaker was a random X90 rider. Elected officials were few and far between (probably because they all left when they realized they weren’t getting special priority).
Just another waste of time from Albany. Instead of finding ways to harm the MTA they should just fund them like they should instead of sitting around thinking of the most inane plan possible.