Jay Walder

Nearly one year ago, Jay Walder took over the reins of the MTA from Elliot Sander. The outgoing MTA CEO and Executive Director had been well regarded among transit planners, but when the state agreed to institute its payroll tax plan, Sander’s job was no more. The state reorganized the MTA’s governing structure so that the CEO and board chairman would be one person, and that one person would be Jay Walder.

A year later, the MTA is struggling through more financial problems, and Walder has moved ahead in his rather thankless job. In good times, politicians will use the authority’s bureaucratic bloat to gain political points, and during bad times, those same politicians will blithely rob from the MTA’s revenue streams and then bash the authority for slashing service, raising fares or both. Even as the MTA often deserves a heavy dose of criticism, those in charge are judged and harshly at that.

In The Daily News this weekend, Pete Donohue rounded up some of the city’s transit advocates and business community heads to grade Jay Walder. Somewhat surprisingly, the marks were mostly high, but Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign leveled the harshest criticism. If anything, the judges are almost too generous in their grades.

Donohue asked his panel to grade on five categories: finances/fares, technology, labor relations, efficiency/eliminating waste and service improvement. In a year dominated by service cuts and fare hikes, the MTA’s economic situation and Walder’s handling of it have taken many of the headlines, but these judges, with one exception, gave Walder grades in the A range. “Walder was dealt a bad deal,” Robert Yaro, head of the Regional Plan Association, said. Yaro, who gave Walder an A-, continued, “The State Legislature grabbed money from the budget and payroll taxes are coming in under expectations. He’s facing an unparalleled situation and it is real.”

Others on the panel praised him for opening up the MTA’s finances and “leveling with the public on the need for fare hikes and service cuts .” Yet, Walder was docked marks for not setting a fare policy that, in the words of CBC’s Charles Breacher, “links fares to the cost of a ride.” Gene Russianoff gave him the MTA head a C- but noted that “the economy handed Walder this mess.”

Across the board, the judges praised Walder’s handling of technological innovation. Walder’s relationship with technology is, after all, why Gov. David Paterson tabbed the form Transport for London official. Robert Paaswell, director of the Urban Transportation Research Center at CUNY, gave Walder an A. “This is a strength and changes are being made,” he said, “but he needs to be selling the importance of next generation technology to the public more.” Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City noted that, despite Walder’s expertise, “budget problems have pushed tech investments to the back burner.”

As the report card progressed into the hot-button area of labor relations, the grades grew worse. Russianoff gave Walder and F for his handling of the TWU. “Raw tensions fueled by hundreds of layoffs, management’s mean hit on spit-on bus drivers and personal attacks on Walder” is how he explained the grade. “Riders” — Russianoff’s constituents — “need the warring parties to find common ground.” Brecher, on the other hand, praised him with a B grade for “pushing for changes in overtime and scheduling.”

The panel spoke glowingly of Walder’s attempts at internal restructuring and consolidation, moves that have already saved the MTA approximately $500 million annually. “More than any other chief executive, he’s aggressively taken on combining functions,” Yaro, who gave him an A, said. Scoring Walder an A+ here, Wylde echoed, “Walder has accomplished more in one year than we saw happen in the previous decade.”

Yet, Russianoff, who gave Walder a B+, hit upon the key challenge facing anyone in charge of the MTA. Walder, he says, has “miles to go before public sees MTA’s action as credible.” It’s tough to get the public exciting over the minutiae of bureaucratic reorganization, and until Walder can translate his internal cost savings into better service for the MTA’s riders, New Yorkers will not embrace the notion of a leaner MTA.

Finally, the panel discussed service improvements, an area clearly lacking at the MTA. Russianoff and Wylde were the most critical as the two handed out an F and a D respectively. “Cuts in express bus and other services have been very painful to neighborhoods like Bay Ridge, where I live. Progress on Bus Rapid Transit seems to have slowed,” Wylde said.

Charles Brecher’s C and his assessment seem to capture the reality of the situation best. “The effort to accelerate bus rapid transit services is a plus,” he said, “but still missing is strategic thinking about long-run improvements. …More reliable service on the existing lines requires more attention to state-of-good-repair work.” Without money, though, none of this is possible, and the five critics seemed to offer up a fair assessment of Walder’s strengths and weaknesses over his first year on the job.

Of course, I can’t end a report card piece without chiming in with my own views. So without ado…

Amidst a fiscal crisis, Jay Walder, center, hasn’t been able to implement many of his plans for the MTA. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

When Jay Walder took over as the MTA CEO and Chairman nine months ago, he thought he was inheriting an organization on the path to financial recovery. The state legislature had just passed a comprehensive funding package that was supposed to provide the authority with some fiscal stability over the next few years. But, as we know, once the economy bottomed out, the legislature stole earmarked funds and the payroll tax revenue came in well below the state’s tax accountants’ estimates, Walder had to set aside his ambitious plans to solve the MTA’s financial crisis.

So instead of presiding over growth, in the short term, Walder has presided over contraction. The authority dusted off its plans to trim service, started cracking down on waste and overstaffing at both the administrative and operation levels and readied a sweeping proposal to raise fares. It just might save the MTA, but at what cost?

Along the way, Walder made more than a few enemies. Union leaders, while working with him behind the scenes, have not publicly embraced the MTA head. After all, who could blame them? Walder has engaged in a public battle to cut down on jobs, and the union doesn’t want to and shouldn’t accept layoffs without a fight. Walder has also alienated a public already frustrated with the MTA by putting into place service cuts and fare hikes. And he still has five more years left on his not-quite-ironclad contract.

Late last week, Eliot Brown of The Observer profiled Walder’s first nine months. As Jay proclaimed his adherence to the agreed-upon 7.5 percent fare hike, Brown pondered a question that should concern transit advocates throughout the city: Will Walder “ever be able to unshackle himself from fiscal issues sufficiently to install more noticeable, meaningful changes-an undertaking that would take time and money-or will he continue to have to put out these fiscal fires, started long before his arrival, with viciously unpopular actions?”

Brown’s piece provides a nuanced look at the financial troubles plaguing the MTA. He tracks the travails of the five-year capital plan and highlights how the authority is dependent on the state for operations funding while the state would rather have nothing to do with it. Into this morass came Walder from McKinsey (and before that, Transport for London). “When I heard that he was possibly going to [take the job], I said, ‘There’s no way this guy is going to want to take a pay cut to take this,'” one MTA Board member said to The Observer.

What makes Walder stand out and what gives me hope that he could shine if given the money and support is the fact, as Brown notes, that “he is the first MTA chairman in two decades who was not a campaign contributor to the sitting governor. Instead, he is simply a pure transit technocrat, one whose well-regarded analytical approach-a “performance indicators” report on the agency’s Web site shows month-by-month changes to things like on-time performance-speaks of his time at McKinsey.”

But Walder must also recognize political reality. The governor who appointed him — David Paterson — will be in office for just a few more months before giving way, in all likelihood, to Andrew Cuomo. The current Attorney General has been relatively silent on issues of the MTA and hasn’t given his vote of confidence to Walder. As the MTA’s top spot is often a political plum, I don’t expect him to do so yet, but Walder has a Golden Parachute. Cuomo would be a fool to ignore both the CEO’s credentials and the money owed to him.

For better or worse, the MTA is where it is because previous leaders haven’t had the economic management expertise and the transit knowledge to deliver a better product. Walder may not be the most tactful when it comes to service cuts; he might not be the most invested into the politics; and he may not be the perfect leader. But he should be allowed to stick around for a while, to ride out the financial tide, and to see his pro-rider initiatives implemented. “I,” he said to Brown, “retain the view that our elected officials are going to recognize what the MTA has done in a very difficult climate. I think they will recognize what’s happened.”