Senate’s MTA Plan Panned
Gov. David Paterson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, both knocked the Senate Democrats’ plan to bail out the MTA, saying it’s a short-term plan that doesn’t address the fiscal problems of the agency.
Paterson indicated he will reach out to Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to get agreement on the Ravitch plan, which he is supporting.
“There seems to be the belief that these types of issues can be deferred into some sort of future activity,” Paterson said at a news conference this morning surrounded by supporters of the Ravitch Commission plan, including Ravitch himself. “This is what has gotten Albany into trouble time and time again.”
Silver and Ravitch said that not acting now will put the MTA back into the troubled times it faced in the 1970s.
“I remember in the 1970’s we failed to make investments in our mass-transit system, we were short-sighted in that we didn’t invest in the infrastructure,” Silver said. “I think we need a comprehensive plan that includes investment in the infrastructure that is not short-termed in scope. We need certainty, businesses need certainty, our economy needs that certainty. Now is the time to do it.”
Ravitch said, “If we don’t continue the capital spending on both the state of the good repair and the expansion projects, this system is going to slip back to where it was back in the 1970s.”
Ravitch said that the Senate plan doesn’t provide enough revenue to help the MTA out of its fiscal hole.
The disagreements make it increasingly uncertain whether a deal could be reached by a week from tomorrow, the MTA’s deadline on a deal.
Sen. Pedro Espada, D-Bronx, said after Paterson’s press conference that the Senate Democrat won’t support tolls on the East and Harlem River bridges.
“I’m not surprised,” Espada said of the opposition to the Senate plan. “It’s very predictable that we’d be asked to write a blank check” for the MTA.
| 
Email This
Advertisements
mments (1)
Posted by Ruben Safir | March 17, 2009 14:37
The MTA has bit off more than we can afford and doesn’t need my bridges. It needs to scale back its plans and restrict its programs to projects that NYC can afford.
Since it doesn’t come under anyones jurisdiction, it won’t do that. Instead to uses the agency for pork barrel politics around the region and picks on the weakest hand in its grip, the outer boroughs of NYC, to exploit for its own unneeded agenda.
It doesn’t need a 15.2 billion dollar east side access program for the LIRR. Scratch that off the list, and the Fulton Street program and the pork west side extension that was traded for a westside stadium project, and the MTA has a surplus.
So they are lying to us. Plane and simple.