The MTA convened an emergency board meeting on Wednesday to outline the most draconian cuts it would make if the federal government did not deliver its $ 12 billion request before its end.
The agency said it needs the funds to balance the budget and come through 2021. In November, they will present next year’s budget options to the board, which will have to vote on on 31 December. (Last year’s corporate budget came in at $ 16 billion.) If the $ 12 billion does not pass, the MTA will consider scrapping the metro and bus services by 40 percent, and shuttle services by 50 percent. Dismissals and fare and extra toll hikes than planned are also on the table. Almost all capital projects would be put on hold under this plan.
In July, the agency estimated it was losing $ 200 million a week from a combination of the dramatic drop in equestrian and tax revenues and the increased cost of cleaning buses and trains to reduce the risk of coronavirus infection. Subway service is 75 percent lower than pre-pandemic levels, and buses are 45 percent lower. MTA Chairman and Director Pat Foye said that if service levels continue at this pace, the financial deficit will be much worse than the Great Depression.
The MTA released its first round of $ 3.9 billion in federal aid funding in late July. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate passed with recess without passing a second relief bill.
“The future of the MTA and the future of the New York region rests squarely in the hands of the federal government, the U.S. Senate specifically,” Foye said. “If they don’t, terrible choices lie ahead.”
The MTA estimates that cutting metro and bus services by 40 percent, and laying off 7,200 transit workers would save the agency $ 880 million a year.
But the president of the Transit Workers Union Local 100 and board member John Samulsen said there was no way the union would accept these cuts. “We paid with blood,” he said, “that you would come to ask the workers who just put their necks on the line by being on the front lines of this fight against Covid-19 is ridiculous.” The union said nearly 100 transit workers suffered COVID-related deaths.
MTA CFO Bob Foran also predicted that the agency would have to cut 50 percent of the shuttle service to balance the budget, leading to 850 cuts on Long Island Railroad.
Speaking Wednesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo added that the state does not have enough money to prevent these types of cuts. “It’s not mathematically possible,” he said.
Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said they will fight to secure the funding.
“I was proud last month to stand up with MTA leadership to call for billions in federal funding in the forthcoming relief package and I will continue to work with President Foye and state and local leaders to advance the future of the MTA and the economic to secure recovery of our region, “Gillibrand wrote in a statement that went on to blame Republican Senator Mitch McConnell for a lack of federal relief.
Budget watchdog Nicole Gelinas, of the Manhattan Institute, said Congress should provide the funding, but it will not solve the larger problems of the MTA such as reduced ridership. “The MTA should not think of Congress money as a solution, but as a way to buy time to do many of the other things they called draconian – e.g., working with staff to be more productive. ‘by being strangled, not dismissed (especially with commuters for commuter trains and operation with one person metro train with camera coverage of the train), instead of waiting until the last minute and different departures have to make or freeze pay,’ wrote them in a statement.
Foye calls the government the “funder of the last resort.” If federal funds do not pass, he predicts, “it will cause a major disruption in the operation of the MTA, its service in the region, and enormous lasting damage to the economy of the New York City region costing dozens and hundreds of thousands of jobs. “
