Lee Sander, who resigned as MTA CEO last month, has an op-ed in the NY Times today and goes to town on the state lawmakers that dragged out the process for an MTA bailout, writing, "In the political process that led up to this rescue, damage was inflicted on the M.T.A.’s reputation." He elaborates:
Elected state and city officials leveled the old and discredited accusation that the agency keeps two sets of books, one real and one for public consumption, and suggested that agency officials were untrustworthy and corrupt, comparing them to Bernard Madoff, the self-confessed mastermind of an enormous Ponzi scheme. These false charges landed enough sensational headlines to help camouflage the politicians’ own inability to reach a timely agreement on how to finance public transportation.
The M.T.A.’s shortcomings are well known: crowded subway cars (ridership has increased by 50 percent in the past decade), outdated signal technology that limits the number of trains that can run per hour, decaying subway stations, buses stuck in traffic, the still incomplete Second Avenue line. But long-time New Yorkers who remember the transit system’s sorry state during the 1970s know how much it has improved in 25 years. Even today, despite a global recession, the agency continues to make progress.
Sander goes on to tout how quite a few subway lines have improved recently and point out the MTA is "burdened by convoluted and overlapping operating charters, work rules and politically dictated mandates." He hopes for that whoever is selected to lead the MTA next has the full support of elected official and warns, "If, on the other hand, politicians continue to run against the M.T.A., their rhetoric may become self-fulfilling prophecy, and the system may devolve into the state of dysfunction they denounce."
Second Avenue Sagas calls Sander a "sacrificial lamb" and suggests, "We all should push Albany for a fully-funded five-year capital plan and a true commitment to public transit." And here's a bit about the "ghost of two sets of books."
