Transit meets are virtually secret: critics

MTA officials have for the past year used the pandemic as an excuse to curb public access to the agency and information about its $17 billion operating budget, transit advocates said Wednesday.

The MTA board held its 13th virtual meeting since Gov. Cuomo issued a COVID-19 executive order suspending rules that require the agency to hold in-person public meetings.

Since the order took effect in March 2020, the MTA has stopped holding public committee meetings that include detailed discussion of its capital spending and the MTA units that run the city’s buses and subways, toll bridges and commuter railroads.

Instead, the committee meetings have been rolled into the monthly board meeting that decides issues across the entire agency, which over the last year has become rushed.

Members of the public — who before the pandemic filled up MTA headquarters to lodge their complaints at board and committee meetings — are now required to record their comments two days in advance.

“There’s so much lost by not having the committee meetings,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. “Having a 10- or 15-minute conversation about billions of dollars of debt isn’t really serving anyone as well as it could.”

MTA board members are still holding unofficial committee meetings, but they’re hidden from the public.

Interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg said Wednesday she regularly speaks with members of the MTA’s Transit Committee, which approves billions in contracts, fare hikes and service changes for the city’s subways and buses.