ALBANY — Enough is enough and it's time for a change.
MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber told state legislators on Thursday that the state could do more to ensure the state isn't flailing around to fund the agency's capital repairs every five years.
"There's a $250-billion state budget, the MTA capital budget is totally predictable," Lieber said told Assembly Member Ed Braunstein (D-Queens) during a joint budget hearing run by the Senate and Assembly on Thursday. "We had a $55-billion capital program. It's expiring. It's not a secret, and it is a little bit of a mystery to me that every time the MTA capital program comes up we treat it like, 'Oh my god, they need a bailout.' This is no different than Medicaid and education and everything else out of the state. It happens to be treated like an off-budget item. I don't agree with the paradigm that the MTA has a 'gap.'"
Last year, the MTA Board approved a $68-billion renovation plan to cover financing for projects from 2025 to 2029, but only identified $35 billion of funding for it (pooling together promises from the state, city and federal government plus some of its own revenue-backed debt). Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) used their power as members of the Capital Program Review Board to nix the plan on Christmas Eve because the pair said they wanted to use the state budget to identify the remaining $33 billion.
Gov. Hochul, Heastie and Stewart-Cousins have all insisted they support funding the full plan, but so far no one at the State Capitol has actually floated any ideas on how to make the plan whole.
No legislators at Thursday's hearings suggested any ideas to fully fund the capital plan either. And despite being the prime mover in budget negotiations, Gov. Hochul is still putting the onus on legislators to figure it out, and reminding reporters of old triumphs like a 20-year-old hanging around high school sophomores.
"Gov. Hochul crafted a plan to ... provide long-term stability to cover operating costs," said Hochul spokesperson Kara Cumoletti. "The Legislature vetoed the 2025-29 capital plan and said they wanted to address funding concerns in the context of the state budget. Now that the budget process is underway, we will have those conversations."
Compared to Medicaid, on which the state spent $35.9 billion last year, or education spending, which also routinely costs the state over $30 billion every year, devoting a small piece of the budget to the MTA capital plan would be a relative pittance.
With that in mind, Lieber suggested that Albany shouldn't suffer collective amnesia every few years when the MTA has to fix and upgrade the biggest transit system in America — which serves something like 40 percent of the nation's transit users, yet gets only 13 percent of federal transit funding.
"I am pushing back a little bit on the idea that somehow we have a budget gap that needs to be addressed," he said. "This could be addressed by existing state budget."
The MTA's big boss also suggested that legislators and the governor could also find new revenue via taxes and fees, or even new strategies for financing pieces of the capital plan, which was possibly a reference to the agency's suggestion that rail car acquisition get its own new financing strategy for this and future capital plans.
Talking to reporters after the hearing, Lieber said his plea for more regular funding was well within the context of other expansive infrastructure.
"Everybody gets comfortable with the fact that airports are built by the federal government's subsidy of our aviation system, that the airlines don't necessarily pay for. So they should be comfortable that the government also should pay for the basic infrastructure of this mass transit system that carries more people than the whole goddamn aviation system the United States every day," he said.
Some advocates pushed the idea for more direct state aid even before Lieber sat down in Albany yesterday. On Wednesday, the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA put out a report laying out a variety of ways to fund the current capital plan, and included the idea giving the MTA either 1 percent or 2 percent of the state budget annually directly to capital plan. The PCAC report argued that either slice of the budget would allow the agency to bond out tens of billions of dollars for capital upgrades.
The push to do things differently makes sense given the history of the last three capital plans. Approval of the agency's 2015-2019 plan was delayed for a year and a half after former-Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed the plan and then spent 18 months arguing with legislators on how to fill a funding hole in it.
The 2020-2024 capital plan had a smaller hole, thanks to the decision to implement congestion pricing, but there was still haggling over how much the city and state would each contribute. That plan at least started on time. The new one did not.
Advocates agreed with Lieber.
"As a general matter, Janno's point is well taken — some places do rolling capital budgets or 10-year capital plans instead of five-year which gives more continuity of funding," said Reinvent Albany Senior Policy Advisor Rachael Fauss. "One of the issues is that new capital fund revenues have typically been dedicated only for one capital plan at a time, stretching them out for 15 years or so before they can be bonded against again, like congestion pricing, the mansion tax, and internet sales tax for the previous capital plan, so other sources are needed for the next several plans."
As to Lieber's suggestion that the state can pony up more dough for every plan, Fauss said it was less of a matter of whether the state could do it and more a matter of whether bigger funding commitments would come with ridiculous strings attached. In the last three capital plans, the state has ensured that it can wait out the other funding sources and act as the last dollar each time, including when Cuomo dedicated a record $8.3-billion state contribution to the 2015-19 plan.
"The MTA and riders need a guarantee that the state will actually pay the money to the MTA in a timely manner," said Fauss. "The state budget for the 2020-2024 plan and the proposal for the 2025-2029 plan forces New York City to pay on a schedule, or they will literally take their money away — what the state needs to do is something similar to hold themselves accountable and not be the 'last dollar' in each plan because that allows for too much discretion for them to given the MTA the money as late as possible."
