MTA Politics

I started Second Ave. Sagas nearly six years ago, and for the MTA, six years is actually a key number. That’s the length of time a CEO/Chairman term should last. Somehow, it doesn’t always work out that way, and since starting the site, I’ve seen five men and women take over the authority’s reins. High turnover does not lend itself to much stability.

Since Jay Walder’s departure in late 2011, Joe Lhota has been the man at the top. Although I was initially skeptical of a non-transit wonk taking over the agency’s CEO and Chairman role, Lhota has shown a willingness to both learn on the job and zealously advocate for New York’s transit network. His current term expires on June 30 of 2015, and I have hopes that he’ll last that long. Someone should stick around.

In the aftermath of Sandy, though, New York’s political forces seem to be conspiring against the MTA and its long-term outlook. With a relatively weak field of Democratic mayoral candidates, the city’s independent and Republican politicos have been casting around for a suitably strong candidate to maintain their hold on City Hall. After the MTA’s generally stellar response to the storm, Lhota’s name has come up more than once.

This week, an important voice in the business community lent its pages to the cause as Greg David of Crain’s New York trumpeted Joe Lhota 2013. Here’s his take:

One person New Yorkers would have confidence in is Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota, who has shown what a good manager does in a crisis. He is clearly fiscally conservative, knows city government inside and out from his days as Rudy’s first deputy mayor, and appears eerily calm in a crisis (although he has been known to lose his temper in public at other times).

Mr. Lhota’s path for a mayoral candidacy begins and ends with Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He’s the governor’s man now. If Mr. Cuomo cares about the competence of the next mayor and if he’d like a devoted ally at City Hall, Mr. Lhota fits the bill. The governor’s support for an independent candidacy would be very powerful.

Maybe the impact of and obsession with Sandy will fade in the next few weeks and the mayoral race will return to a debate about how much to raise taxes on the wealthy, how to impose the living-wage mandate, how many sick days businesses should be required to provide, and how to set aside more contracts for minority- and women-owned companies. If not, expect print and TV media to begin more critical coverage of the Democrats and build up the Lhota legend.

One way or another, Sandy — and any other megastorm — will dominate the New York City news coverage through the next election cycle. The current mayor and the next one will have to address the city’s vulnerability and infrastructure upgrades necessary to protect our assets, our homes and our economy. Lhota, a former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani, certainly could do the job.

But I’m selfish. I’d like someone who can fight for transit to stick around for longer than a year or 18 months. One could also argue that heading up the MTA is nearly as important as being mayor. Is the political promotion worth it? It depends upon that person’s ambitions, but I’d like to hope Lhota will stick around to see his current job through. With budget issues and a capital campaign coming due, the next few years are key for the MTA, and stability at the top and advocacy from the top will remain vital.

The illustrious State Senator Lee Zeldin seemingly enjoys himself a tea party in the traditional sense of the phrase. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. Nowhere is that more obvious than in his dealings with the MTA. After spending two years trying to take $1.5 billion away from the transit agency, Zeldin had the audacity to rail, loudly and broadly, against the current fare hike proposal.

In a statement that seems to ignore how all MTA agencies will be raising tolls and fares, Zeldin focused on his Long Island constituents’ key concern: LIRR fares. Let’s look at what Zeldin had to say.

“While proposing an average increase of 8.19% to 9.31% for LIRR riders, the MTA offers zero data of total projected revenue estimated to be brought in through the drastic fare and toll hikes throughout the MTA region. It’s ironic that the press release is posted under the ‘transparency’ feature to the MTA’s website, when the MTA fails to make any mention of the projected fiscal impact of these hikes on its budget.”

Zeldin cannot be forgiven for not paying attention as MTA CEO and Chairman Joe Lhota has said over and over again that each fare hike proposal will generate approximately $277 million in annual revenue for the MTA. If I know that, our elected officials should know that as well. He continues:

“While the MTA states that ‘year over year controllable costs’ have been reduced by 0.3%, there is still much more work to be done. Some of the areas ripe for further efficiencies include further reducing overtime, decreasing the number of excessive salaries over $200,000, reforming work rules, selling additional real estate, reducing the excessive number of managers and supervisors, and so much more.”

Here, Zeldin isn’t wrong, but he’s not right either. The MTA has already drastically reduced overtime expenditures, and at some point, it’s actually more cost-efficient to pay time-and-a-half for overtime than it is to hire new employees. Some of this other critiques — particularly with regard to reforming work rules — require action from Albany, and I have yet to see Zeldin take an active role in anything resembling work rule reform. Selling real estate is a one-time fix for a systemic problem. He went on:

The days are over for $2 billion taxpayer funded bailouts with no questions asked. Meanwhile, we are also not going to play the victim against sustained threats of significant fare and toll hikes or dramatic reductions of service as the primary alternatives. The time has come for the MTA to do more to look within for cost savings and start running more like a competitive business, than a bloated government bureaucracy.”

Zing! The only thing missing here from Bash-the-MTA Bingo is a claim of two sets of books. Here, it’s entirely unclear what Zeldin is talking about. Who’s playing the victim against threats of anything? The MTA is raising fares because it has to generate a few hundred million dollars, and they’ve laid those figures out on the table. If anything, this is classic victim-blaming by a State Senator.

It’s worth remember too what Zeldin has done as a State Senator. He ran for office on a platform focusing around repealing the MTA Payroll Mobility Tax, and he succeeded in rolling back approximately $300 million of that tax — coincidentally the same amount the MTA has to raise for this fare hike. Not satisfied, he has continued to call for a further reduction in the payroll tax rate without offering any substantial changes or sources of revenue in return. For this Long Island representative, it’s all been about blame without accepting any responsibility to dictate sound transportation policy, and he’s at it again.

New York, these are your politicians.

At an RPA panel this morning in New Jersey, MTA head Joe Lhota spoke about securing dedicated transit funding, and his words made me ponder a generational divide. Via Dana Rubinstein:

Speaking today on a Regional Plan Association panel at the Princeton Club that also included New Jersey’s transportation commissioner, Lhota said, “I’m not sure about the state house in the legislative end in Trenton, but I can tell you when I go to Albany, I mean, just trying to talk about increased investment in rail, including in the folks in the M.T.A. region, it’s not that easy.”

“I hope it’s a generational thing,” he continued. “Pretty much the phasing [in] of the people who are the younger folks who are much used to not driving, who are used to taking more rapid transit, and that’s what we’re actually seeing at the M.T.A. The increase in growth, if you look at the demographics of it, it’s basically people who are 35 and below, who are using the system, significantly more than people older than that.”

On the one hand, Lhota’s characterization makes perfect sense to me. Many of the representatives in Albany controlling transit’s purse strings grew up in an age when a car was synonymous with personal mobility and the decaying and dangerous subway system was to be avoided. For most of their formative years, political or otherwise, the MTA couldn’t be trusted with running a train without a breakdown let alone spending money, and the subways weren’t a priority.

Yet, on the other hand, many of today’s under-35 set also came of age at a time of MTA corruption or ineptitude. They hear vaguely of charges of improper bookkeeping and understand transit funding only through the lens of Albany divestment in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But they do not, as Lhota noted, have the same level of car ownership as their parents and are much more ardent subway users. That’s why many of the younger representatives in Albany are some of the more vocal transit advocates.

It’s probably foolish or at least naive to think a new generation of lawmakers will suddenly realize the value of transit, but as constituents who are more accepting of the subway system grow up, they can make noises about investment. Waiting out demographics shifts is no way to accomplish anything in a timely fashion, but it certainly can be a piece of the puzzle. I think Lhota is on to something here.

At the risk of sounding like Captain Ahab as he pursued his elusive whale, allow me to opine tonight on David Paterson’s appointment to the MTA. I realize I’ve already questioned his credentials, but with the advocacy groups praising his appointment, someone has to cast a critical eye on this move. I firmly believe it was not a wise one for the MTA.

This morning’s clip comes to us via Fox 5. New York’s former governor sat down with the Good Day New York hosts yesterday to talk about his upcoming role on the MTA Board. Take a gander if you have a few minutes:

For those who want to get right to the meaty part, here’s what Paterson had to say when the Fox hosts asked him about his pending appointment to the MTA Board:

You have to be confirmed by the Senate, and it’s kind of ironic because about ten years because myself and another State Senator Eric Schneiderman, who’s now our attorney general, we actually we were in an action suing the MTA because at the time the MTA had two separate sets of books, one for the public and one for their internal practices and it created a lot of mistrust with the public. What we’re trying to do now is establish the kind of policies that the people of New York could be proud of.

The emphasis clearly is mine, and his statements are more than a bit dismaying. When it comes to recent political history in New York State, the MTA has simply been unable to shake this image of having two sets of books. Despite releasing more budget data than any other state authority and making all of this information available online to the public, New Yorkers are stuck with this ten-year-old image of two sets of books. It was, as I’ve mentioned before, a claim discredited in the state’s highest court and one put forward by a comptroller who ended up in jail on corruption charges.

For the past few years, whenever any politician has cast a wary eye on the MTA, the claim of two sets of books has arisen to the forefront. Yet, it’s a claim with no foundation in established fact. The MTA hasn’t been very good — or even adequate — at spending money efficiently, but it’s been willing to show exactly how it’s spending (or, as some may say, wasting) money. It doesn’t keep two sets of books, and perpetuating this myth does nothing but harm the cause of transit in New York State.

Paterson went on a popular television show and put forward this theory as though it were fact. He also admitted that he did not know how long his MTA Board appointment would be, and he again assailed the payroll tax that he himself saw through Albany. “At one point we had to tax businesses along the MTA corridor a whole lot more than they deserved to pay. Fortunately, this new governor has put an end to that. But at the time we had to close a $20 billion deficit,” he said. That $20 billion isn’t quite accurate either as the payroll tax was designed to close the MTA’s operating budget gap and not its capital funding hole.

At this point, it’s awfully hard to take Paterson seriously as an MTA Board member. Luckily, he’ll be one of 22, and so he won’t be in a position to cause much damage. But let’s not kid ourselves: He’s as qualified to sit on the MTA Board as he was to serve as this state’s governor for two years.

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday that he is nominating his predecessor in Albany to an open seat on the MTA Board, I was a dissenting voice amidst a chorus of cheers. With advocacy who need to keep themselves in the good graces of the governor praising David Paterson for his willingness to push through a payroll tax to “save” the MTA, I wondered about his constant raids on MTA funding and his inability or unwillingness to do more. After all, he had to find some money or else the MTA would collapse.

Now, as Cuomo, who hasn’t ridden the subway since before he was elected governor, has defended Paterson’s appointment (Daily News, video), the former governor has spoken out on few transit issues. His words do not comfort me and should perhaps give pause to those rushing to endorse his candidacy. In a wide-ranging interview with Capital New York, Paterson essentially shot down every transit funding proposal without offering up much in the wya of new ideas, and in fact, he seemed unfamiliar with some proposed expansion plans that have been out there for years.

Dana Rubinstein has the story:

When I asked soon-to-be M.T.A. board member David Paterson about Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s proposal to revive the commuter tax, the former governor said it was “a perfectly valid concept whose life ended in 1999, and the current thinking does not accommodate it.” Asked if it was just politically unfeasible, Paterson said, “Yeah.”

But another of Stringer’s proposals did find favor with Paterson: the creation of an X line that could be built along existing rights of way connecting subways in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. “His suggestion about the train that connects the outer boroughs, I think, was overlooked,” said Paterson, adding, “And I like how he calls it the ‘X train.’ ‘Ex’ sort of meaning ‘outer’? He should change it to the ‘Y train.’ It would sound more inclusive.”

The Triboro RX plan, as it is known in planning circles, was a part of Lee Sander’s address on the 40th anniversary of the MTA. That speech was delivered two weeks before Paterson took over as governor from the scandal-plagued Eliot Spitzer, but he seems to have little familiarity with it.

Rubinstein had more though on the former governor’s relationship to the payroll tax, a funding mechanism he helped usher in:

The payroll mobility tax proved exceedingly unpopular in the suburbs surrounding New York City, and Governor Cuomo has since rolled it back, which sits poorly with transportation advocates, but which Paterson says was the right thing to do. “The reason I accepted the payroll tax is because I had to close $21 billion of deficit,” said Paterson. “We talk about $10 billion deficits now like it’s the worst thing that ever happened. I’m the only governor in the state that ever had to close $21 billion in their first year. And so at that point, anything that was on the table that involved revenue generation to pay off these debts, I took.”

“But now the governor who has continued to cut spending and has cut two budgets in a row on time, he has rolled back a lot of that tax, and at this point in history, it is precisely the right thing to do,” continued Paterson.

Right now, the M.T.A.’s finances are in a precarious state. The state-run authority’s debt burden is enormous, and it is lacking in sufficient dedicated revenue streams. “That’s a problem that the governor will have to face,” said Paterson. “But I think what the governor is saying is that the distribution of the responsibility has to be more fair, and I totally agree.”

Basically, Paterson is advocating for rolling back the payroll tax while calling any commuter tax a political non-starter. He’s using political buzzwords — such as tax fairness — without paying heed to the issues. He may have, as many have noted, appointed Richard Ravitch to solve the MTA’s problems, but he never embraced the proposals issued by Ravitch. His familiarity with some transit expansion plans that should become reality seems tenuous at best.

Ultimately, Paterson will not make or break the MTA Board. There have plenty of knowledgeable and active board members over the years and plenty who do not attend meetings and have little understanding of the issues facing transit in New York. At a time when transit needs its vocal supporters, Paterson’s early efforts aren’t comforting, but perhaps, he’ll prove me wrong.