A Nassau County Judge, elected on the Conservative party ticket last year, dropped a bombshell on the New York Metropolitan region early Wednesday evening when he issued a short and sloppy ruling declaring the MTA Payroll Mobility Tax unconstitutional. The tax, which leads to approximately $1.2-$1.4 billion in annual revenue for the perennially cash-starved agency, has been unpopular outside of New York City, but the alternative — higher fares and much less service — is worse. Now we’re left on the precipice of such a reality.

The decision itself — which you can read right here — is short and on shaky legal grounds. Supreme Court Judge R. Bruce Cozzens, Jr., divorces New York State economic conditions from reality and comes to the conclusion that the tax, as challenged by Nassau County, required a home rule message. Here’s the kicker paragraph:

It is not contested that the counties within the MCTD would be affected if there were a decrease in the capability of the MTA. However, it is hard to see how the residents in Buffalo or other upstate areas would similarly be affected. If this matter really is a substantial state concern, than the legislature could have reasonably taxed every county within the state under a general tax law to meet the MTA deficit. Instead, it chose to only tax those counties within the MCTD. This is because it is only the counties within the MCTD that are affected by the continuance of development of the MTA. By the actions of the legislature itself, it has been shown that the MTA payroll tax is only an issue that is of concern to the residents within the MCTD. Therefore, the budgetary crisis of the MTA is not a substantial state concern and the exception to the home rule message requirement does not apply in this case…The court finds that this law does not bear a reasonable relationship to a substantial State concern.

Setting aside the fact that there is no one central government in the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District that could issue a home rule request for a multi-county tax, Cozzens is charitably off his rocker if he thinks MTA funding isn’t a substantial state concern. Well over half the state’s population is centered in the MCTD and without the MTA, the entire’s state region would grind to a halt. We’re not asking Buffalo to fund the MTA (even though perhaps we should), but the impact of losing transit service downstate would definitely be felt upstate.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of precedence, this ruling, if upheld, could be disastrous. Various other taxes endorsed by the state are levied only in the MCTD, and those have stood for years or, in some cases, decades. Sales taxes, mortgage recording taxes, franchising taxes, fuel taxes — all of these could fall under similar logic to that issued in this misguided ruling. The MTA would be facing a multi-billion-dollar deficit that it would likely be flat-out unable to cover without defaulting on many of its outstanding fiscal obligations.

So where do we go from here? As transit advocates are calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo and leaders in Albany to do something, the MTA says it will not let the case end here. “We will vigorously appeal today’s ruling,” the authority said in a statement. “We believe this opinion will be overturned, since four prior challenges to the constitutionality of the law making the same argument have been dismissed.”

In my mind, it is indeed likely to be overturned, but the short-term losses are unclear. Cozzens’ ruling simply declared the law unconstitutional; he didn’t stay his own opinion for the politics of it to work out. The defendants will have to ask for a higher court to grant a stay if they want to continue collecting the money during the appeals process, and then they’ll have to go through such a process. It’s not going to take a day, a week or even a month.

This is just another partisan jab at the MTA by a judge elevating politics over the law. It’s another sign that transit will never be on an adequately secure position vis-a-vis funding, and it’s another sign that Albany isn’t doing its part. In my thread earlier, some commenters suggested cutting LIRR service to cover the deficit. The MTA won’t do that, but such a doomsday future is one step closer today than it was yesterday.

The MTA and Dutchess County have a tenuous relationship at best. The local politicians rail against the MTA whenever it can, and one Poughkeepsie newspaper ran a factually incorrect and ideologically misguided editorial a few months ago calling for the MTA’s dissolution while repeating the tired two-sets-of-books trope. It isn’t friendly territory.

So yesterday, Joe Lhota, head of the MTA, spoke at a Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce breakfast. He offered up a full run-down of the benefits the MTA provides to the region and spoke at lenght about both the need for subsidies and how the MTA relies less on those subsidies than many similarly situated transit agencies.

For full coverage of his back-and-forth, check out Dana Rubinstein’s full report; Lhota says some interesting things about people who commute into the city and Metro-North’s relationship with the overall economic health of parts north of the city. I’m most concerned and intrigued by what he said of the payroll tax:

“I need to find a way … whatever happens with the payroll mobility tax, to find a substitute for it that’s more equitable and more fair,” said Lhota. “But one thing you should know, is that the money … coming from the payroll mobility tax is not going to New York City. It’s actually going to the counties.

“But be that as it may, I will work with Senator Saland, I will work with the assemblymember, on trying to find ways to make the payroll mobility tax or its replacement more equitable,” he continued. “We do need the money. As I mentioned before, there’s no commuter railroad in the country that can work unsubsidized. So we need to find some form of subsidy that is more transparent, more direct, more equitable, than the payroll mobility tax.”

The payroll tax opposition never goes away. Even now, Long Island representatives are trying to whittle it away, but Lhota’s point is one that seems to go unheeded in Albany. The MTA cannot afford to lose the money from the payroll tax without an adequate replacement. Be that congestion pricing, tolling or other revenue streams, the money has to come from somewhere. Or else those upstate economies will suffer as services are lost. I’ll leave it to you to define “more equitable.”