Monday, April 28, 2025
Washington, D.C., is known for its Metro, London for its Underground and San Francisco for BART. Downstate New York? We’re known for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which, in recent decades, has become infamous for all the wrong reasons.
The perpetual adverse headlines about the MTA are hard to ignore: Waste, fraud and mismanagement have plagued the authority for years. More than 65 million people rely on this vital agency, yet it’s clear that its leadership has failed to clean up its act. That’s why I’ve introduced legislation (A.6088) that would direct a forensic audit and a complete top-down overhaul.
The legislation would require the MTA to hire a certified, independent accounting firm to conduct a comprehensive forensic audit, which would produce a report highlighting its inefficiencies, redundancies and areas ripe for reform.
The numbers speak for themselves:
From 2021 to 2024, the MTA lost more than $5 billion in unpaid tolls.
After the agency invested more than $250 million in the emergency intercom system Help Point, it determined that half of its calls were prank reports.
The MTA was prepared to waste $1 million studying the psychology of fare evaders before scrapping the idea — proof that it continues to mismanage resources instead of focusing on real solutions like better enforcement.
Nearly $8 billion spent on flood-resilience projects after Superstorm Sandy failed to prevent basic problems like broken flood door gaskets.
These are just a few examples of the MTA’s waste and mismanagement, but they are far from isolated incidents. There have been numerous reports of fraud and abuse, including:
In December 2020, five MTA workers were charged with fraud for falsely claiming hundreds of overtime hours.
As of May 2024, the authority’s payroll jumped by $663 million, with overtime spending hitting record levels. In 2022, more than 300 MTA employees earned at least $100,000 in overtime, and 734 employees earned more in overtime than in regular pay.
The MTA’s $19 billion operating budget is larger than the entire budgets of 14 U.S. states, and despite spending all that money, it just keeps coming back for more. Then there is its Capital Plan. Just last month, at a transportation budget hearing, MTA Chairman Janno Lieber requested more than $33 billion to help fund the $68.4 billion Capital Plan. Lieber acknowledged that no matter how much money New York state gives the agency, it will always come back for more.
We cannot justify this endless cycle of funding when the MTA is burning through everything it has. In 2019, it was required by law to develop a transformation plan to improve operations, increase efficiencies and cut costs. A recent audit by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli revealed that the MTA has “not demonstrated that it achieved the objectives of improved service levels for the customer, process efficiencies and cost reductions.”
Let’s be clear: The MTA is failing taxpayers. Its leadership is either unwilling or incapable of fixing the mess. Bloated budgets, mismanagement and waste have gone unchecked for too long. The agency is hemorrhaging money, and without a forensic audit, the dysfunction will only get worse: A lack of accountability creates the perfect breeding ground for fraud.
I know we’re all tired of reading about scandals and heavy spending with no results or improvements. The MTA’s years-long failure to address these festering issues is a drain on our downstate economy, which depends on a functional transportation system. Instead of pouring more money into this broken system, we should be directing those funds to communities that truly need them. The time for making excuses is over — the MTA needs a full-scale overhaul, now.
Ed Ra represents the 19th Assembly District
