We say audit the MTA

Only a year ago, the New York State Legislature was wrangling behind closed doors over a deal to bail out the fiscally troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The agreement, which imposed a commuter payroll tax on counties served by the MTA, including Nassau County, was supposed to put the authority on a sound financial footing.

It didn’t.

The commuter tax charges 34 cents on every $100 of payroll for businesses, nonprofit agencies, local governments, even school districts. A year after it was enacted, the MTA remains as insolvent as ever, and once again the authority is considering massive cutbacks to service, including on the Long Island Rail Road.
When do we say enough is enough? The MTA clearly needs greater oversight and accountability.

On Long Island alone, the MTA is proposing $11 million in cuts that would affect 17,000 daily commuters. Service reductions have been proposed for each of the LIRR’s 11 branches, some as extreme as discontinuation of weekend service. Other changes, like those proposed for the Long Beach and Babylon branches — which annually see around 6.5 million and 19.7 million riders, respectively — consist mostly of eliminating or combining one or two peak trains.

A year ago, the Herald editorialized on the issue, suggesting that the MTA be audited before any bailout package was considered. We hear too many stories about waste and abuse. A forensic audit is the only way to know for certain whether, in fact, the MTA is losing money because of the current recession, as it has claimed, or because of mismanagement, as many in the public believe to be the case.

Last year the Herald also advocated a combination of a payroll tax and East River bridge tolls. The Legislature nixed tolls last year. We, however, believe they could be a good thing for the MTA and for New York City. The primary reason for the tolls would obviously be to increase revenue for the MTA. At the same time, the tolls could encourage more people to ride the LIRR rather than driving, which would decrease traffic congestion — and greenhouse-gas emissions — in the city.

We think of tolls much as we did Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan, in which cars would have been charged a fee to enter Midtown Manhattan in order to reduce traffic and emissions. Ultimately, the state Legislature killed that proposal in 2007.

Sadly, in 2009, the Legislature also rejected East River tolls and instead went with the payroll tax as the sole means of replenishing the MTA’s depleted coffers. That put an undue burden on local small businesses, already ailing nonprofit organizations and local governments.

In Nassau County, we’ve heard little from our state legislators on the issue other than the usual, carefully worded press releases. It’s time that our local lawmakers speak up on behalf of the people.

There is a growing movement afoot to have the MTA audited. A group of state legislators from Suffolk County recently held a news conference at a train station calling for an audit. Better still, go to www.auditthemta .com. There you’ll find information about what’s happening in Dutchess, Westchester and Putnam counties, which are also subject to the commuter payroll tax.

State Assemblyman Greg Ball is holding a series of press conferences and town-hall meetings in which he is asking people to sign a petition seeking an audit and asking them to write symbolic protest checks with the amount they are paying in commuter payroll taxes. Ball is asking people to bring the checks to a tax-revolt rally at the Putnam County Courthouse on April 15.

This is the kind of action we’d like to see in Nassau County — civic engagement on the part of legislators and citizens to finally rein in the MTA and hold it accountable to the people.