New York City could contribute a lot more to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s capital plan if the state can stop so-called lockbox raids and give the city more say in projects, said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“I’ve said we are open to considering other contributions, but there have to be some very clear ground rules,” de Blasio said Thursday at a swearing-in ceremony for new officers at the new police academy in College Point, Queens. “We have to be certain that the state’s contribution is real and definable and verifiable.”
Multiple reports have said city officials are prepared to offer more than $2 billion to the authority’s capital plan for 2015 to 2019 in a possible break to a logjam over mass transit funding in the region.
The state-run MTA is one of the largest municipal issuers with more than $36 billion in debt.
The city contributed $657 million to the plan in its fiscal 2016 budget. MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast then requested $3.2 billion, or quintuple the size, saying the city is the largest beneficiary of the system.
The state government over the past few years has raided a combined $270 million from a so-called lockbox transit account to balance its general fund.
“We want to make sure the money that’s put into the MTA stays in the MTA,” de Blasio added. “So those are the things that we’re working for, but we’re certainly open to doing something if we get those conditions.”
A rift between de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has added political theater to an MTA funding crisis that has percolated since a state review panel in October 2014 rejected without prejudice the authority’s proposed $32 billion capital program.
One print ad from the Transport Workers Union Local 100 that called for increased city funding depicted a cartoonish de Blasio jumping a turnstile.
"We've got 3,000 jobs riding on the capital plan. We're looking out for our members," said Local 100 president John Samuelsen.
Bickering even overshadowed last month’s opening of the No. 7 subway line Hudson Yards station on Manhattan’s West Side, with Cuomo appointee Prendergast and de Blasio exchanging swipes.
“I think the fight is very unfortunate, and a total distraction from what the conversation should be all about,” Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission watchdog organization, said at a recent infrastructure conference in Manhattan.
Earlier this week, City Council members Ydanis Rodriguez and Julissa Ferreras wrote Prendergast saying the city pays enough already. Rodriguez and Ferreras chair the council’s transportation and finance committees, respectively.
Queens Borough President Melinda Katz has also criticized the authority.
“New York City residents and businesses already pay more than our fair share at 75 percent of the MTA’s regional budget, and yet in a transit desert like Queens, most of the subway stations we do have are still structurally deficient,” she said.
Last year, the capital plan had a $15 billion shortfall. Since then. Cuomo has committed to the program about $8.2 billion in next year’s state budget and the MTA has identified procurement efficiencies to further whittle the shortfall.
“We’re going to have a much bigger discussion in New York City, a much bigger plan with all the stakeholders – with the city, with the state, with the suburban counties, with the business community – to figure out really how to make the MTA as strong as it can be for the long-haul, because our entire economy relies on it,” said de Blasio.
