Editorial: Force a New Bookkeeper onto the MTA
April 14th, 2008
Enough is enough. The State Legislature should force the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to hand over its financial books to an outside agency for review. And city officials should take the lead in intensively lobbying Albany to make this change. Enlisting a private firm with a solid track record should be an idea given serious consideration.
New Yorkers have been reeling since the MTA announced last month that lighter-than-expected revenue from real estate taxes and mortgages would force it to delay or abandon service upgrades that were promised in the run-up to the most recent fare hike. The announcement was not just disheartening, but truly frightening. Already in 2008, the MTA is $21 million short of its own projections. And the year is far from over, and the recession far from its depth. Who knows how far in the hole the MTA’s fantasy-land accounting could put the transit system by December?
The gap raises some serious questions about who exactly is doing the projecting, and how. A $21 million shortfall represents either significant calculation errors or projections made by an accounting team living outside reality, if not both. Neither of these should be tolerated any longer. Neither of them can be. And it does not help that MTA executive director and CEO Elliot Sander was apparently so removed from the accounting that just three weeks before the shortfall announcement, he made a big show of touting the supposedly on-schedule improvements in the first-ever “State of the MTA” address.
There is far too much at stake. The Fulton Street Transit Center is supposed to be the hub of a rebuilt Lower Manhattan. The Second Avenue Subway Line is supposed to alleviate crowding and spur economic development across Manhattan’s East Side. The No. 7 line extension is supposed to be crucial to the viability of the new Hudson Yards plan. The stations and improvements are supposed to make possible the new Yankee Stadium and proposed Atlantic Yards complex. East Side Access is supposed to revolutionize commuter transit.
Especially without congestion pricing, there is a huge amount the MTA now needs to do to improve public transportation in New York City.
The mayor and many others have made clear cases for how crucial improving and enhancing public transportation is to the vitality of these projects. How much longer will the MTA’s incompetent accounting be allowed to endanger the future of New York City? How much longer will development and growth be held hostage by justified fears that the MTA will fail once again?
Of course, the shortfalls are not entirely the MTA’s fault. No one should truly expect a public transportation system to come into the black on its own, and the continuing withdrawal of state contributions should have long ago prompted every member of the Assembly and State Senate to come to the floors of their respective chambers screaming. And the enormous debt service due to bad decisions made a generation ago is a massive gorilla on the MTA’s back.
But that is the reality of the situation, and the MTA has to operate within that reality. An agency that consistently reports cost overruns and revenue shortfalls—and has a history of deftly hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in its own books—is an agency that must no longer be tolerated. On behalf of taxpayers, on behalf of their own interests and on behalf of the future of New York, the political leadership of New York must devise a way to take the MTA’s accounting away from the MTA.
New Yorkers have been reeling since the MTA announced last month that lighter-than-expected revenue from real estate taxes and mortgages would force it to delay or abandon service upgrades that were promised in the run-up to the most recent fare hike. The announcement was not just disheartening, but truly frightening. Already in 2008, the MTA is $21 million short of its own projections. And the year is far from over, and the recession far from its depth. Who knows how far in the hole the MTA’s fantasy-land accounting could put the transit system by December?
The gap raises some serious questions about who exactly is doing the projecting, and how. A $21 million shortfall represents either significant calculation errors or projections made by an accounting team living outside reality, if not both. Neither of these should be tolerated any longer. Neither of them can be. And it does not help that MTA executive director and CEO Elliot Sander was apparently so removed from the accounting that just three weeks before the shortfall announcement, he made a big show of touting the supposedly on-schedule improvements in the first-ever “State of the MTA” address.
There is far too much at stake. The Fulton Street Transit Center is supposed to be the hub of a rebuilt Lower Manhattan. The Second Avenue Subway Line is supposed to alleviate crowding and spur economic development across Manhattan’s East Side. The No. 7 line extension is supposed to be crucial to the viability of the new Hudson Yards plan. The stations and improvements are supposed to make possible the new Yankee Stadium and proposed Atlantic Yards complex. East Side Access is supposed to revolutionize commuter transit.
Especially without congestion pricing, there is a huge amount the MTA now needs to do to improve public transportation in New York City.
The mayor and many others have made clear cases for how crucial improving and enhancing public transportation is to the vitality of these projects. How much longer will the MTA’s incompetent accounting be allowed to endanger the future of New York City? How much longer will development and growth be held hostage by justified fears that the MTA will fail once again?
Of course, the shortfalls are not entirely the MTA’s fault. No one should truly expect a public transportation system to come into the black on its own, and the continuing withdrawal of state contributions should have long ago prompted every member of the Assembly and State Senate to come to the floors of their respective chambers screaming. And the enormous debt service due to bad decisions made a generation ago is a massive gorilla on the MTA’s back.
But that is the reality of the situation, and the MTA has to operate within that reality. An agency that consistently reports cost overruns and revenue shortfalls—and has a history of deftly hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in its own books—is an agency that must no longer be tolerated. On behalf of taxpayers, on behalf of their own interests and on behalf of the future of New York, the political leadership of New York must devise a way to take the MTA’s accounting away from the MTA.
