THE BUCKS STOP HERE
Blaz threatens to yank MTA cash in war with gov NEWS SAYS Grow up and pay up, mayor
WITH THE MTA chairman set to unveil his plan to fix the city’s subways, Mayor de Blasio went on the offensive Monday — saying the city shouldn’t pay any extra money for repairs because he doesn’t have “faith” the agency will use it wisely.
“I’ve already put my money where my mouth is because I gave them $2.5 billion just two years ago that they’re nowhere near spending,” a fired-up de Blasio said on NY1.
“I’m not going to throw good money after bad.”
MTA Chairman Joe Lhota is expected to unveil his shortterm plan for fixing the subways as early as Tuesday — and de Blasio is concerned that part of Lhota’s strategy is calling for more cash from the city.
De Blasio said it’s the state and Gov. Cuomo that should pay up.
“I don’t have faith in their current plans, and I don’t have faith in any new plan until I see the actual changes and see the money to go with them,” he said.
Lhota told the Daily News his plan will address the problems in the system, but he needs help from the city as well as the state.
“I’m convinced the governor will be there for us,” he said. “The mayor needs to be part of the solution. Right now, he’s part of the problem where he’s saying he wants nothing to do with it.”
He criticized the de Blasio administration for looking to score “cheap political points.”
Lhota said he needs city funding now for day-to-day operations and cannot touch any money for long-term repair needs, as the mayor has suggested.
“The mayor's solution is rob Peter to pay Paul and take away capital funding that’s already been earmarked for badly needed projects like expanding the Second Ave. subway into Harlem,” he said.
“This isn’t politics, it’s a simple question of math and law. The city is wholly responsible for the capital plan and has only contributed one-third of what the state contributed.”
Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever said the mayor needs to look at the big picture.
“The only thing that matters right now is fixing the problem,” she said.
“We need everyone at the table offering constructive solutions and resources because that’s what the people of New York deserve. We all have a choice — be part of the solution or part of the problem.”
City officials say they pay more than their fair share already. The city’s residents, visitors and workforce already contribute about twothirds of the MTA’s operating budget through tax revenue, city officials said. The city also kicks in about $800 million a year to pay down the debt on the MTA’s capital plan.
De Blasio has argued that the state should be completely responsible for funding subway operations.
Cuomo and Lhota, meanwhile, have argued that the city has neglected the subway, which serves the mayor’s constituents and is technically owned by the city, and has been paying less than its fair share.
De Blasio called those claims a “smoke screen.”
“By the governor trying to put the onus on the city for a situation where the MTA isn’t even spending the money it has effectively, doesn’t even have a
plan to fix the service — that’s crazy,” he said.
“This is a bait-and-switch. This is trying to draw people’s attention away from the central problems that are the state’s own making.”
The comments came a day after de Blasio rode the F train and demanded that Cuomo “take responsibility” for the conditions of the transit system.
De Blasio lashed out after statements from Cuomo and Lhota saying that a decades-old law made the city solely responsible for funding the subway’s capital plan — though the state has for years funded the plan.
The mayor — who like Cuomo has been accused of ignoring issues with the dilapidated subway system until they became a fullblown crisis — also proposed a series of fixes for the system Monday.
The mayor wants the MTA to accelerate short-term fixes to the troubled system, and sharpen its measurement of subway and bus ontime performance and things like overcrowded trains, air conditioning and rush-hour wait times.
De Blasio officials said that over the past five years, subway delays have more than doubled, from around 28,000 per month in 2012 to more than 70,000 per month today.
De Blasio has also complained that the MTA has not used 90% of the $2.5 billion the city put up for the capital plan. The MTA has to exhaust its own money before it can tap into state and city money, under the deal Cuomo and de Blasio reached on long-term repair funding.
Lhota called the mayor’s remarks “disingenuous,” and said the state has actually increased funds for the troubled transit system.
Operating aid has gone up by $940 million since 2010, and capital funding has gone up by more than $9 billion, he said.
“What we need is leadership, not photo ops,” Lhota told The News on Sunday.
Asked on NY1 on Monday if the state and the city could just work together, de Blasio said, “There’s something, respectfully, simplistic about the notion, ‘Stop fighting each other.’ When there’s real disagreements, people are going to fight.”