Veronique "Ronnie" Hakim will be the interim executive director of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced.
Hakim is the current president of the state-run MTA's New York City Transit division. The MTA, one of the largest municipal issuers with roughly $36 billion in debt, operates the city's subway and bus service, Long Island and Metro-North railroads and several inter-borough bridges and tunnels.
According to Cuomo's statement, a seven-person committee will search for a permanent replacement for Thomas Prendergast, who is retiring from the MTA on Tuesday.
Prendergast and Ferrer are on the search committee, which includes former MTA chairman and 2013 New York mayoral candidate Joseph Lhota; Partnership for NYC president Kathryn Wilde; former U.S. transportation secretary Rodney Slater; Scott Rechler, chairman of the think tank Regional Plan Association and former vice chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; and John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 in New York and a nonvoting MTA board member.
Hakim has spent nearly 25 years covering two tours of duty at the MTA. For 18 months in 2014 and 2015, she was the executive director of New Jersey Transit.
MTA Vice-Chairman Fernando Ferrer, a former Bronx borough president and twice a candidate for New York mayor, will be acting chairman, Cuomo said.
