Katherine N. Lapp has left her job as head of the MTA, Peter Kalikow will soon depart as head of the MTA Board, and Larry Reuter is moving on as head of New York City Transit. Lots of New Yorkers are bound to say good riddance, but mass transit is something I happen to know a good deal about, and I know better. The three are blamed for rising fares, service cuts, a three-day strike, and an upcoming fiscal crisis, because they happened to be around when the bills for past shortsighted decisions came due. Meanwhile, the people who made those decisions, and those who benefited from them, fail to take responsibility for their actions. As long as the public lacks the mental ability to connect problems in the present with decisions made in the past, the political class will always be tempted to sell out the future for the present. It isn’t these “villains” I blame for the ongoing financial problems at the MTA in the face of record ridership. It is past “heroes” who are actually to blame, some of whom are running for President.
Reuter may not have been the genius-hero that David Gunn was, but he was a good manager. I worked a couple of years at NYCT under both, in each case far from the executive suite, and I saw improvement under both. More controversial is the role of Kalikow and Lapp.
As I wrote earlier, the MTA is being forced to restrain services in part because it has accumulated huge debts. And it has accumulated huge debts in part because Mario Cuomo and David Dinkins in a budget crisis to avoid raising taxes and deeper spending cuts, and George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani in better times to become popular through tax cuts and more spending elsewhere, cut off city and state funds for the MTA Capital program. And who didn’t object to this? Kalikow’s predecessor and Pataki crony Virgil Conway, that’s who. He helped his boss by keeping a discussion of the future consequences of these actions off the table. In contrast, Kalikow and Lapp were up front about the effect of past decisions on the present, and even said that riders ought to pay enough to keep up with inflation, but should not be made to suffer for past debts. In doing so they were all but blasting the past decisions of their boss Pataki, without credit.
And what about those riders? They are represented, to an extent, by Straphangers’ attorney Gene Russianoff, who was hailed as a hero when he convinced Pataki – over the objections of MTA staff – to provide deeper and deeper discounts, causing the fare to plunge relative to inflation (and MTA labor costs). A fair deal – riders put less in, taxpayers put less in, everyone is happy and popular, and the future isn’t a problem. In Russianoff’s corner was ex-State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who claimed the fare could be kept lower even longer by keeping some of the money reserved for the capital program (borrowed money) and using it to fund operations in lieu of higher fares. They replicated exactly the “save the fare” politics of the 1950s and 1960s for their mutual benefit. They may have ended up re-creating the 1970s, not that they would probably care. Russianoff has already come out in favor of deferring major capital projects like the Second Avenue Subway (might as well cancel them), because will all the debts run up over the past decade, he figures (rightly) that the MTA cannot afford anymore. Deferred maintenance, albeit limited, is already occurring in reduced cleaning of stations and tracks.
Speaking of the 1970s, one of the big factors in the collapse of public services, soaring taxes, and soaring fares at the time was the rich pensions handed to those cashing in and moving out in the wake of the 1966 transit strike. And in 2000, in an effort to become Governor with union backing, then State Comptroller Carl McCall pushed through a huge pension enrichment, causing the MTA’s pension expenditures to soar. Money paid for those not working, of course, is not available for those who are working – hence the ongoing need to cut staffing, cut services, and restrain wages for those on the job. That wasn’t enough for Roger Toussaint, however, whose New Directions movement rose to leadership at the Transit Workers Union Local 100 by promising a 20/50 pension to replace the 25/55, the same deal that destroyed the system in the 1970s. And, forced to back up his rhetoric, he went on strike to get it. That pension enhancement had already been passed by the New York State legislature without a single “no” vote.
Ah yes, the legislature, or should I say Silver and Bruno, the only people who count. This branch of government has spent the last decade complaining about “unaccountable” public authorities, but in fact any public authority that doesn’t make a profit is completely accountable to the legislature. It is the legislature that approves the subsidy money, and in so doing controls the MTA budget. It is the legislature that approves the MTA Capital plan. They share culpability with the MTA Board. Were I on that Board, I would have resigned in protest when the debt laden 2000-04 Capital Plan went through and the huge cost of the 2000 pension enhancement was deferred. And then I would have stood outside MTA headquarters with a sandwich board in protest when the even more debt-lade 2005-09 Capital Plan was enacted. Which is why people like me don’t get appointed to posts like that; toadies do. It is the legislature that has passed the pension enhancement.
Funny, but I haven’t heard Pataki, Giuliani, Hevesi, McCall, Silver, Bruno, the MTA Board, Russianoff, and Virgil Conway announcing that taxpayers, toll payers, and MTA riders and workers have not choice but to accept a diminished future to balance benefits handed out, by themselves, in the past. Instead, everyone blames Kalikow, Lapp and, to a lesser extent Reuter. The public seems to fall for it. I’d like to see these three, once relieved of their responsibilities, call a press conference to tell the public the actual financial history of the MTA. Not for the benefit of their reputation. For the enlightenment of the ever gullible citizens who do not understand that if it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.