Playing Chicken Over the MTA

Fine: Gov. Cuomo finally appointed Janno Lieber as acting chairman and CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Thursday, but that still leaves the agency without permanent leadership in the middle of huge challenges — thanks to Cuomo’s standoff with the state Senate.

It’s not just the exit of Pat Foye, who held the top double-job, but also of Sarah Feinberg, who’d been acting head of NYC Transit these last 16 months.

By all accounts she’d done excellent work. And while Lieber also won respect as MTA construction chief since 2017, the pool of proven talent at the top still just shrunk.

Out of the blue in June, the gov opted to move Foye out and demanded to split the top two jobs so he could make Feinberg

MTA board chair and Lieber CEO. The Assembly OK’d it but the Senate balked.

Neither side has compromised. So the MTA is stuck with an acting leader as it tries to get riders back post-pandemic and solve huge fiscal woes. Service cuts loom as the agency faces a projected $3.5 billion cumulative deficit in 2024 and 2025, after federal aid runs out.

Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and her No. 2, state Sen. Mike Gianaris, are proving they care more about their bickering than about the MTA or the millions of commuters and straphangers it serves.

Cuomo’s increasingly erratic leadership may be the central cause of this standoff, but that’s a side issue for now: The gov and the Senate need to stop holding the MTA hostage to their game of chicken.