Category: MTA Politics

Joel Miller, a doctor and a Republican Assembly representative from the Poughkeepsie area, should know about transit in New York City works. After all, he grew up and went to school in the city, and although he has lived in Poughkeepsie since 1969, he has served on the New York State Assembly since 1995. Considering how Metro-North serves his district and how people rely on the trains to get to and from the city, he should know all about it.

Of course, he doesn’t, and we can induct Rep. Miller into the ever-growing club of Albany politicians who have no clue how the MTA and its internal structure works. Even as Rep. Miller brings up some valid points about the authority, he does so by accident, and his critiques should fall on deaf ears.

The extant charges involve this article and this press release, both of which touch upon similar concerns. The gist of Miller’s complaint is that the payroll tax harms his constituents and that the MTA should not be “bailed out” by Albany — those responsible for MTA oversight and funding — time and time again. How utterly uncreative.

The recent quotes concern the report from the Empire Center for New York State policy concerning the MTA payroll. Noted that the MTA payroll has increased in a time of bailouts and funding crises, Miller did not miss a beat or the chance to get his name in the paper. “I am very alarmed with the findings of this report, which detail the level of ineffectiveness and degree of mismanagement at the MTA,” he said. “With the ballooning state debt and an ongoing fiscal crisis in Albany, the MTA should not be authorizing an increase in pay for hundreds of its employees. While state officials have been forced to make tough decisions and cut spending, the MTA has chosen to continue its path of irresponsible spending. This stems from a lack of accountability.”

The emphasis, of course, is mine for obvious reason. While the MTA payroll inched up by a few percentage points last year, one of the greater sources of increase came from the arbitration-awarded raises the MTA’s TWU workers earned. Now, this isn’t to say that these workers should not have won those raises or that the MTA should not be paying them. It is to note that Rep. Miller seems to believe the MTA opted to give everyone raises when quite the opposite was true. The authority had no choice in the matter, and if Miller doesn’t recognize that reality, I wonder if he’s the one suffering from a lack of voter accountability.

For Miller, bashing the MTA is nothing new. Over the last ten years, he’s repeatedly tried to sunset the MTA payroll tax. He claims it puts a “disproportionate burden” on Dutchess County and should be rescinded completely because some of his constituents don’t use the MTA.

“It is unfair and unwise to force people to shoulder this weight,” he said of the payroll tax last fall, “despite the fact that many of them do not use mass transit while continuing to reward the MTA for years of fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement.” Clearly, the lessons of positive externalities are lost on Rep. Miller.

As with many New York politicians on both sides of the aisle, Miller can’t make a good point without dragging down his arguments. The MTA does have a bloated payroll; the MTA is mismanaged; and Dutchess County shouldn’t carry more than its fair share of the tax burden. But it’s not because the MTA awarded raises and wants to pick on the suburbs. Until our elected start showing a modicum of comprehension when it comes to the way the MTA works, I fear that fighting for transit under this modified home rule political scheme is an uphill battle, and Rep. Miller is just one more boulder we need to push up the hill.

Marty Golden, Republican, is, according to his website, “Brooklyn’s voice in Albany.” The four-term State Senator hails from District 22, an oddly-shaped area that includes transit-rich neighborhoods such as Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst and Ocean Parkway along side car-heavy neighborhoods such as Gerritsen Bay and the area surrounding Marine Park. Who his constituents are and what they need remain a mystery to Senator Golden.

To whit, a call for a Town Hall on the MTA. With many of his constituents set to lose transit service, Senator Golden’s office has announced a meeting on the service cuts. “The MTA continues to move forward to adopt the doomsday budget that will severely impact bus service in our community,” John Quaglione, the Senator’s press secretary and district manager, said earlier this week. “We are not going to let the MTA come into our neighborhood and greatly disrupt our transportation system. We can not afford it and the residents and commuters deserve better.”

Now, Brooklyn and, in particular, Golden’s district are in for some harsh cuts. Bay Ridge is losing numerous bus routes and seeing service along others reduced. The M train will no longer go to Bay Parkway in Bensonhurst after June 27, and midday and weekend service on every subway line that passes through Golden’s area will be scaled. He should be outraged. But a Town Hall? Really? That’s the best one of our State Senators can do?

Over the last few years, Golden, as a loyal member of the do-nothing opposition minority party in the Senate, has, well, done nothing. He did nothing to support the Ravitch plan and did nothing to support congestion pricing. Now, he wants to do more of nothing without offering a solution to the MTA’s financial woes. The Town Hall meeting might turn out some disgruntled voters, and it might win Golden some political points in a district he won unopposed in 2006. It won’t solve the problem.

Of course, Golden’s position is an untenable one for obvious reasons. First, he’s a member of the state GOP, and the Republicans in the New York State Senate have done nothing to assist the MTA. It is, they reason, the majority party’s problem, and even though thousands of Golden’s constituents need their subways and buses, he hasn’t helped with a solution. Second, he represents some very vocal and adamant drivers. Even though their numbers are but a slim fraction of those who ride the subway, these drivers near Marine Park have been the most outspoken congestion pricing opponents. Golden wouldn’t dare turn his back on those with political clout who needs their autos. That solution is staring him in the face, but he won’t embrace it.

Golden is but one of many State Senators fishing in the dark. Earlier this week, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli agreed to a forensic audit of the MTA, and Assembly representatives were ecstatic. Fred Thiele, an Independent representative from Suffolk County who is an outspoken critic of the payroll tax, had this to say:

“I want to take this opportunity to thank the Comptroller for his hard work and the dedication of him and his staff as they work to ensure that state taxpayer money is spent in accordance with the law. As a strong opponent of the MTA Payroll Tax and the ‘bailout’ legislation enacted by the Legislature last year (I voted against the proposal), I want to make sure these monies are spent and collected properly; especially given that MTA estimates for the Payroll Tax revenues have been grossly underestimated. The financial woes of the MTA have been well documented only recently and I pledge to continue to work with my Assembly colleagues and Comptroller DiNapoli on this issue.”

Here, Thiele is, simply put, ignoring reality. The MTA’s estimates haven’t been “grossly underestimated”; rather, the numbers supplied to the MTA by the state’s own accounting and taxation department have been grossly understated. If he were to stop and examine the situation, he would find fault resting not entirely with the MTA but in Albany too. That would, however, require an Assembly representative to take far too much responsibility for the way the state is run.

In the end, DiNapoli would conduct his audit, and we know what he’ll find. The MTA isn’t a very lean organization and could be better run. But he’ll also find honest accounting and a budget hole of $751 million this year. What then, I wonder, will the Marty Goldens and Fred Thieles of the state do? When the truth comes about an MTA teetering on the edge of fiscal ruin, who will the grandstanding politicians blame next? It certainly won’t be themselves.

As the MTA has spent the last few years careening from one financial crisis to another, it has become abundantly clear that Albany isn’t going to help the New York Metropolitan Area’s transit network stay solvent. As our state representatives have refused to acknowledge the vital role public transportation plays in the region’s — and indeed the state’s — economy, our legislatures have offered half-hearted measures with faulty economic bases while ignoring comprehensive solutions with economic, environmental and social rationales. It has been an utter derogation of responsibility.

In one sense, then, state officials are simply fulfilling the prophecy of the MTA. Politicians originally created the state authority and the New York City Transit Authority, its city-based precursor, to avoid direct voter ire over transit authority problems and, in particular, fare hikes. Prior to the founding of the NYCTA, the mayor and the city’s Board of Estimate had to propose and vote on all matters relating to transit funding, and when it become fiscally necessary but politically infeasible to issue a fare hike, a political stalemate set in.

The authorities were supposed to insulte transit from politics and allow the policy and financial experts to run the show. Arguably, the opposite has happened. Although experts of varying degrees have found themselves in positions of power and influence at the MTA, the politicians can now use the authority as a whipping boy and scapegoat for their own lack of leadership on issues of transit funding. It is one giant mess.

Now and then, political commentators propose to restore more control over the New York City-centric transportation network to the powers-that-be in the Big Apple. Why should a state-established authority have so much power over the subways and buses when those are vital parts of an inherently local transit network? To that end, Chris Smith in this week’s New York magazine makes the case for more city control over the MTA:

As long as the state is divesting, the mayor should make a bold play for the transit system. Bloomberg proposed a city takeover in his first campaign, only to become the latest in a long line of mayors who complain about their powerlessness to improve subway and bus service. Here’s a real chance to do something more than politically convenient carping. Certainly the city could never handle the $8 billion transit budget on its own. Yet Bloomberg should find a creative way to leverage the state’s weakness into a bigger city presence in MTA decision-making.

In exchange for increasing the city’s contribution to MTA funding, Bloomberg could get more seats on its board, or a say in naming the MTA’s chief; then the city could help shape the long-term financial plan the MTA badly needs. That might not be the most monumental of mayoral legacies. But it comes down to what he’s always staked his career on: competence. And this city is going nowhere if we depend on Albany to keep the trains running on time.

On its surface, Smith’s proposal seems sound enough, but if we delve a little deeper, it runs into two substantial problems. The first involves the nature of the MTA and what it would mean for the various subagencies if the city were to exert more control. Because of the need to find a funding mechanism for both intracity transportation and commute rail in the late 1960s, the MTA includes the subway and bus system that operates solely within the five boroughs and also an extensive commuter rail network that brings riders to and from points north and east of the city to work. Allowing the city more control over the MTA as a whole would create regional conflict between New York City and those districts that rely on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North because the city would obviously look to shore up the subways and buses over commuter rail.

On the other hand, giving more of a preference to the five boroughs might not be that bad from a practical stand point. As it is now, more than 90 percent of all non-Bridge and Tunnel MTA rides originate and terminate within the five boroughs on a bus or subway, and Metro-North and LIRR ridership accounts for just three percent each of the remainder. The funding, as the MTA presents it, isn’t nearly as equally distributed with commuter rail earning more than their fare share of the dollars based on a per rider basis. Maybe the city should have more control to better reflect the division of ridership and the relative importance of each subagency.

The second problem is one of dollars. As New York State has no money, the city doesn’t either. It can’t just issue a blank check to the MTA and expect board seats and more power in return because the money to back that check isn’t there right now. The city could, as it tried to do two years ago, institute a congestion pricing scheme or bridge toll plan that would funnel dedicated revenue to the MTA, but without home rule authorization from Albany, that money — and that MTA funding plan — won’t materialize no matter who has the control over the transportation authority.

My arguments here are a rather simplified version of a paper I’m currently writing for a class, and the debate over control of the MTA seems to be evergreen in the annals of New York State and City politics. In all likelihood, the mayor should have more control over the authority, but wouldn’t that just open the door for Albany to further abrogate their MTA funding responsibilities? A possible solution may involve slicing and dicing the MTA to restore the New York City Transit Authority as a stand-alone entity, but even that isn’t a perfect solution as the state could easily take away any funding whatsoever for an agency that operates only within the borders of New York City. The Doomsday Clock, meanwhile, continues to tick.