Second Ave. Sagas

On the pandering of politicians

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

The MTA’s financial problems are no secret. Transit supporters have been working in Albany to identify some source of funding for the $10 billion gap in the capital budget, and the authority has engaged in a very public effort to slash administrative costs. So what do the politicians do? They pander.

In his column this week, Daily News transit guru Pete Donohue takes Albany to task for both its failure to invest in the system and its blatant attempts at pandering. Highlighting a serious of legislative measures that, honestly, are unlikely to pass the Assembly and Senate, Donohue shows how, instead of crafting sensible policies, politicians are using their oversight powers over the MTA to score points.

Noting that New York is home to 600,000 college students, 500,000 public school students who commute, 600,000 seniors and 34,5000 police officers, he writes:

Members of our now slightly less dysfunctional state Legislature have introduced bills requiring the MTA to give free or reduced-price travel to more than 1 million additional New Yorkers – without providing an extra dime to make up for the lost revenue.

College students would get at least 25% off. Senior citizens wouldn’t have to pay at all. Off-duty fire marshals, off-duty police officers and retired cops would all get freebies. Under one of the bills, the MTA would be legally prohibited from charging public school students – something it threatened to do during a recent fiscal crisis. The proposed bill, however, wouldn’t even require that state and city government continue paying part of the tab as they have for years.

Not for nothin’, but someone has to pay for mass transit or the system goes to hell in a handbasket. “I understand the impulse of legislators to make sure students and others travel on subways and buses for free or at a discount, but Albany has to help fund these rides,” Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said. “Otherwise, commuters will be stuck with tens of millions in costs, putting pressure to raise the fare or cut service.”

Now, the bills themselves are hilarious in the earnestness. The measure to provide free service to public school students contains no provisions for additional funding from the city or state. The bill mandating free rides for seniors doesn’t even come attached with a justification memo while the discount for college students is designed to help make up for the increased costs of higher education. (Wouldn’t it make more sense to target loan rates instead of subway fares?)

My favorite though is the measure calling for free rides for retired police officers. Supposedly, “the presence of current and retired police officers aboard our mass transit systems would provide an added security benefit to places that are known to be targeted by criminals and where the threat level for terrorist attack is elevated. The intent of this act is to encourage the presence of men and women who possess a level of training to deal with criminal activity through their employment as police officers to use the transportation services of the metropolitan transportation authority so that they may be an extra set of eyes to aid law enforcement in maintaining security and safety aboard such transportation services.” I’m sure having more on-duty police officers would improve safety, but the argument for retired officers seems spurious at best.

Anyway, from a social perspective and in a vacuum, it’s hard to argue against any of these measures. In an ideal world, we would give students discounts while providing for seniors and figuring out ways to ensure that more police officers are patrolling vulnerable areas. But, as Donohue notes, “More important is the need to maintain and upgrade the system so millions of daily riders have a safe and reliable way of getting to work, school and the senior center.”

Right now, Albany has to figure out a way to hold off on the pandering long enough to fund the system. We need to make sure the physical plant is maintained and the system expands to meet demands. After all, what good are free rides if the trains don’t run?

Comments

43 responses to “On the pandering of politicians”

  1. pete

    Unless cops have a quota, they dont care about non-felony crime on the subway. Boombox? nope. Urinating? nope. Drinking a bud? nope.

    If they are retired, they would care even less, unless its a hot young woman screaming. Every NYPD and FDNY gets an unlimited free subway pass AFAIK. What are the average and median swipes per year of those FDNY/NYPD metrocards? That would be an interesting statistic. I would think median is 0.

    Reply
  2. Marc Shepherd

    There are two kinds of pandering:

    1) Telling people publicly what they want to hear, while acknowledging privately that the truth is a lot more complicated.

    2) Being truly clueless about the problem.

    Most of the legislature seems to be in category 2. How many legislators can you name who actually seem to understand what it takes to fund the MTA properly?

    Reply
    1. Chris

      Sort of true, but remember that funding the MTA properly isn’t the legislature’s job per se. Representing their constituents is. And if we’re talking about getting MTA funding from Albany, a solid chunk of those constituents have no direct interest in the health of the MTA, not being served by it. Then there’s constituents who are served but don’t use it. Then there’s the many NYC residents who would vastly prefer fare hikes to tax hikes.

      I suspect that a lot of apparent legislative incompetence is actually just politicians understanding the revealed preferences of voters. I think most state legislators grasp perfectly how to fund the MTA; there’s just nothing for them in making it happen. Most voters don’t have any pressing interest in whether the MTA capital plan is adequately funded.

      Reply
      1. Marc Shepherd

        The thing is, there ARE legislators whose constituents are mianly transit users. Even if we accept your premise that a legislator’s job is to reflect his constituents’ exact preferences, you’d expect at least these legislators would vote to favor trains over automobiles — and they don’t.

        Reply
        1. Chris

          I tend to take that as an example of revealed preference. Voters who one would think might care greatly about transit funding stability, or trains being funded over autos, actually appear not to do so very much, for whatever reason.

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          1. tacony palmyra

            Most people in poor/working class NYC neighborhoods don’t own cars, but that’s not necessarily by choice. Many are aspiring to be future car owners. This is why you see people in Washington Heights more concerned with traffic and parking than they are with their long subway ride. Their relatives moved out to Queens or New Jersey or wherever, and drive in and complain about parking, and the Heights residents see themselves one day making their way up the ladder to that lifestyle.

            (It’s kind of similar to the theory that the American white working class have been convinced to vote against their economic interests because they aspire to one day be rich. When you’re actively engaged in a daily struggle to make ends meet, sometimes it’s more difficult to imagine making things better for all instead of just making things better for yourself.)

            Reply
    2. SEAN

      Actually there’s a third kind of pandering & Eleiot Spitzer got caught doing it.

      Reply
      1. Edward

        More like “pantering”…

        Reply
  3. R. Graham

    I read this article yesterday and almost threw up while reading it.

    Chris mentions it’s not the job of the legislature to fund or know how to fund the MTA.

    That was the old days, now in these new days the legislature acted as if they were outraged about the MTA holding their hat out for more money while explaining if they didn’t get it service cuts and massive fare hikes we’re in the cards.

    The Legislature demanded and got the heads rolled at that time of the CEO and Chairman. Then in a power play move more seats were added to the board with some now representing the legislature.

    You want to act clueless back then? Ok fine maybe you were just to give you the benefit of the doubt. Now you have several reps on the board who should be keeping you well informed.

    And I’ll say this much. I’m sorry I missed the fare hike hearings that were held last year. I noticed a lot of politicians showed up pandering acting outraged when it was they who voted for the emergency MTA funding plan then stripped it away to spend the money earned on other things. I would have signed up to speak to point out every last one of them at that meeting.

    When the hearings come up next year for the 2013 fare hike. You can bet you bottom dollar I’ll be there and I hope I get to speak before some of the politicians so I can point them out for being elected hypocrites.

    Reply
    1. ajedrez

      That’s not happening. Politicians don’t have to wait in line like the rest of us. I’m sure some have registered in advance, but I guarentee you that they found a way to cut in front of people who have registered.

      Reply
      1. R. Graham

        You’re likely too right about that.

        Reply
  4. Bolwerk

    Authoritarians always astound me. There is nothing a retired police officer, token booth agent, or anyone else can do to make the system more secure through force. Force is fine if you need to defend yourself (from authoritarians?), but showcasing it and encouraging it to solve problems is naive at best and thuggish at worst. If anything, a retired cop is just one more potential victim if antisocial behavior really does occur. If you want to make the system safer, address the causes of antisocial behavior, don’t encourage a mall cop security force with ass-backwards subsidies.

    As for ride subsidies, there’s only one proper way to do them: take responsibility for them. If the state legislature says seniors need reduced or free rides, the state legislature should budget for the metrocards those people get.

    The problem with Albany is is devolves costs, but doesn’t devolve responsibility.

    Reply
  5. Al D

    Unfunded mandates, aren’t they just a thing of beauty. Anyway, as long as politicians control the MTA, and they do, you are going to get this sort of non-sense. The MTA needs to be held directly accountable to 1 person, optimally a transit professional with no political interests. This not being a perferct world of course, I guess we need to come as close to that as possible. The State Legislature, all members of which are certainly the epitome of a conflict free, graft free, and solely interested in serving their constituents, need just to provide the funding, funding at a reasonable level and mandated by a law, no negotiation, no gimmes, etc. Then and maybe just then, things could start looking up.

    Reply
    1. Bolwerk

      There is nothing that can be done to make the MTA not accountable to politicians. We just need smarter politicians – ones that are scared of being voted out of office when they act like narcissistic 5-year-olds.

      Reply
      1. R. Graham

        No you need to take this a step further. You need smarter voters. People who won’t vote Charlie Rangel back into office because he’s the only guy their familiar with despite the fact that he disgraced the office and spat in these same voters faces.

        And you need a smarter media who actually will ask the tough questions to these politicians regarding mass transit. It won’t matter in an election until we let the media knows that it matters to us. Every four years is the same old thing. Schools, Crime, Terrorism, Jobs, Rent. Nothing else is important to what is supposed to be the smartest collection of reporters in the world. Please!

        Reply
        1. Bolwerk

          You’re going to get 80% of the voters to stop voting for the guy who got a district gerrymandered for himself? Good luck. Yep, Rangel sucks. But the voters are probably making a value-neutral choice in the primary by selecting Rangel over another similar guy, and the intelligent choice in the general election by rejecting the Republikan. If you want anything better we really need to get some measure of proportional representation.

          Reply
          1. R. Graham

            Or term limits!

            Reply
            1. Bolwerk

              Term limits aren’t reform – they just take away the people’s right to reelect someone they like. Unless the district is very competitive (rare in the USA, almost unheard of in NYS), they simply mean the successor will be the same as the last guy.

              Reply
              1. R. Graham

                But at least a guy like Rangel would’ve been gone years ago with term limits. And if not term limits then recall elections like California.

                Smell significant blood? Ethics violated? Good combined conditions for a recall. Well the ethics violations would be the only real legitmate reason for a recall.

                Reply
                1. Bolwerk

                  Why would recall elections get rid of someone like Rangel? He’s popular.

                  Anyway, I’d be much more concerned about wingnutty cretins like Peter King than I ever would be about kind of batty goofoffs like Rangel.

                  Reply
      2. Chris

        These guys aren’t stupid. They have a pretty cushy gig and are doing what they think is needed to retain it. Almost all of them will be proven right in the next election cycle.

        The question is why do voters in New York state not place a higher priority on ensuring stable transit funding? And the answer in my opinion is simple: more than half of them have no direct dependence on transit (why would we expect upstate voters ever to support MTA funding, without some quid pro quo?), and for the many of the others its a low priority. In particular, for many of the most politically active constituencies, it’s better to keep taxes low than generate revenue to support the MTA.

        Reply
        1. R. Graham

          Your answer to the question is true indeed however this is exactly why we have elected representation proportionate to population and district lines are drawn according to this.

          The problem is the fools we are electing to office down here in NYC don’t give an ounce of caring about mass transit because these officials don’t use it themselves. Take a walk around city hall and notice all of the cars parked around city hall park from City Council men and women. Most of these same people would vote against a congestion pricing fee in a heartbeat because one, they love to drive as opposed to riding the train, two they can park on the curb for free with their placard and three, they honestly can’t afford the fee themselves since they don’t make that much money being in the council which means they would be a perfect candidate to leave the car at home but you won’t find them taking too kindly to that idea. The state Senators and Assembly persons are even worse. At least Bloomberg was able to leverage the Council into voting for congestion pricing, but even our own city reps from both chambers voted against it as a tax on the working people. (They meant to say it’s a tax on themselves for when THEY are in town away from Albany)

          Reply
        2. Bolwerk

          It’s more insidious than that. They have no direct dependency on transit, but they have a dependency on the funds that should invested in transit. That’s why billions of dollars flow out of NYC to upstate and LI.

          Reply
          1. Alon Levy

            LI is a net tax donor, too. It’s Upstate that’s a net recipient.

            Reply
            1. Bolwerk

              I forgot.

              Reply
              1. Alon Levy

                Back when the Tax Foundation’s numbers were still current, you could figure out federal tax imbalances of each county, except that the five boroughs of New York were merged. Long Island was a much larger net tax donor than the city on a per capita basis, and if I remember correctly it was slightly larger on a total basis.

                Reply
                1. Bolwerk

                  Oh, you meant to the feds? I was referring more to the state. LIRR and schools are pretty big spending gifts for LI. I guess don’t know if that ultimately translates into being a tax donor at the state level though. If it did, that may easily have changed once the Dems took over. (The Daily Show video seems to imply, no, but that’s a politician speaking.)

                  Reply
    2. R. Graham

      Walder’s position should be an advisory level position in the Governor’s mansion. That’s the only way to get the state government to take responsibility for it’s state agency. As it’s built now it’s too convenient. The politicians assign some rich unpaid members to the board and fire them when the heat gets too hot.

      If I’m rich and you fire me from a job you’re not paying me for I’m going to shrug my shoulders and go play a few rounds of golf while laughing it all and yelling out loud in a Dave Chappelle voice (I’M RICH!!!!!) This doesn’t bother me because I’m rich!

      Reply
  6. AlexB

    In an ideal world, the fare would be 25 cents and the rest would be paid for by gas taxes congestion fees

    Reply
    1. R. Graham

      And that potentially could only pay the farebox side of things. Mind you I could be wrong. I’m a little lazy right now and refuse to do the math research on that, but there is no way gas taxes adn congestion fees can fund both the farebox and the capital budget.

      Albany is going to have to learn to start taking mass transit seriously when allocating funds in the budget. They claim they want jobs but they don’t seem to understand that affordable and operational mass transit is the key to jobs period. If I can’t afford to travel to work then that job doesn’t exist to me or to anyone on my level who would love to work said job.

      Reply
      1. ajedrez

        It can if you set a really high congestion pricing fee. The Kheel Plan advocated for a $16 congestion pricing fee and free transit within the 5 boroughs a few years ago.

        In any case, if the politicians in Albany allocated a generous amount of money to transit, we could have congestion pricing with a reasonable fee, and 25 cent fares on the subway and local bus.

        Reply
  7. Brian

    I receive a Student Metrocard as a Public School student in NYC, and yet, this is madness. The MTA has a huge hole to cover, they can’t afford to cover any more free rides. The state and the city should both shoulder the costs of providing these rides. Heck, I would cover most my transportations costs myself, if my family income was higher and i didn’t go to school far away from home. Most kids don’t even deserve these Metrocards, since they abuse them by using them on School Breaks (such as this week), or after school when they are not even in school.

    (For the record, I receive a full fare Student Metrocard and live in Corona, and I study at Downtown Manhattan.)

    Reply
    1. R. Graham

      What the MTA should be doing is shutting down all Student cards for this week and Christmas Bring and Winter Break and any other day where it’s an off day for school kids.

      That would save a killing. I understand some kids travel during this time for school related reasons but the card itself is for one purpose. To travel to and from school and the third ride loaded on the card is for just in case reasons like in case during your ride you encounter problems reaching your destination because of Transit and you miss the two hour window on the transfer, you can still use the extra ride on the card.

      All in all I agree with you, but I think the MTA should look more into serving themselves by taking up this idea.

      Now I understand 100% of the schools are not closed and maybe some here and there are open, but push it through anyway and just issue a reimbursement to anyone affected by the shutdown if the students of the open school can provide a certified letter from top administration.

      Reply
      1. Brian

        Exactly my point. And like i said before, most kids abuse these cards by using them on days they have off. Yeah, some kids use them for school related purposes, but most just abuse them.

        Reply
        1. ajedrez

          Most kids don’t abuse them by using them only for non-school-related trips. They might take an extra ride, but I’m sure they use it to get to/from school.

          Reply
          1. Brian

            Go to my old middle school, which has about 2,050 students and my current high school. See if then you think that most kids don’t abuse them.

            Reply
            1. Justin

              They use them to get to and from school. Yes, afterwards they may use them to hang out with friends, but so what? The idea was since public school students are more likely to be from working class families, the MTA wasn’t going to charge them for transportation. Instead, they want to go after working age adults (18-65) to make them pay the full fares.

              Reply
        2. Bolwerk

          Why should that be abuse? Let them go wherever they want. It’s better that they have some mobility, in the vain hope they might go to a museum or cultural event, rather than sit around all day looking at Internet porn or whatever kids these days do.

          Reply
      2. ajedrez

        That’s too complicated. The money saved from not having to pay for the free rides would be less than the cost of processing the extra paperwork.

        Reply
      3. Quinn Hue

        I thought the third ride was to encourage visiting cultural institutions and extracurricular activities?

        Reply
        1. R. Graham

          It’s encouraged for that, but here’s the problem. Where’s the fourth ride for getting back from said instituion unless you are traveling there right after school?

          Reply
  8. J. B. Adams

    When I was bus operator in the ’80s I would get police and firefighters come on, of course for free. Not one time was assisted when incident would occur. I even had a police detective get off the bus when one passanger punched another passanger, in the back of the bus. The incident occured I pulled the bus over to the nearest stop and the detective asked to open the back doors and he was gone, so much for additional security.

    Reply
    1. R. Graham

      Allowing retired officers on for free in hopes they will help out will end up failing the same too. If I’m retired why am I getting involved. Look at that hold up at a Auto Shop that just happened days ago in which the off-duty cop traded fire with the suspects and ended up getting shot. His friend (who’s not a cop) picked up the gun and chased after the suspects firing after he was fired upon and the DA actually considered charging him with unlicensed possession of a gun. If I’m a retired cop why would I risk my retirement when helping out can get you thrown in jail if your actions rub the wrong Assitant DA Lawyer the wrong way.

      Reply

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