New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday named Madison Square Garden executive and former New York City deputy mayor Joseph Lhota to succeed Jay Walder as the chairman and chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The state Senate must confirm the appointment, which Cuomo expects within a month. The move comes one day after he tapped Patrick Foye to be executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Walder will leave the MTA on Friday to become chief executive of MTR Corp., a Hong Kong company that operates rail services in Asia and Europe.
Democrat Cuomo’s MTA search advisory committee had recommended Lhota, a Republican and former investment banker who served in the administration of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Cuomo, a Democrat, also said that Nuria Fernandez will become the MTA’s chief operating officer and Karen Rae will be deputy secretary of transportation in his office.
“Joe Lhota brings one-of-a-kind managerial, government and private-sector experience to the job,” Cuomo said in a statement.
Executive recruitment firm Krauthamer & Associates Inc. helped the search committee, which consisted of public transportation experts and management professionals in the public and private sectors.
Under the Republican Giuliani, Lhota oversaw day-to-day management of the city and supervised its agencies. As budget director, he managed the city’s $36 billion operating budget and $45 billion capital budget, cut costs, led agency reorganizations and consolidations, and implemented performance-based strategic planning.
Lhota, 57, a Brooklyn native, also served as the city’s finance commissioner and as an MTA board member.
In addition to his current title as executive vice president of administration for Madison Square Garden Co., Lhota’s private-sector experience includes serving as the executive vice president of corporate administration for Cablevision Systems Corp., the director of public finance for First Boston, and the managing director of the municipal securities group for PaineWebber Inc.
“Joe Lhota will be taking on one of the toughest jobs in government in one of the harshest economic times in America,” said Gene Russianoff, a senior attorney at the ridership lobby group Straphangers Campaign and a member of the search committee.
A report last month by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said that if financing proposals are approved for the 2010-14 program, the MTA’s debt service could reach $3.3 billion by 2018 — 64% more than in 2011.
Earlier this month, Fitch Ratings downgraded the MTA’s $14.3 billion of Series 2011B revenue bonds, to A from A-plus, citing “higher-than-expected, near- to medium-term financial pressure.”
