Liu to MTA: ‘Show me the money!’

Show me the money and fix the city’s worst subway stations, Councilman John Liu demanded of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) at a joint hearing of the City Council’s Finance and Transportation committees last week.
Liu, chair of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, blasted the MTA for not including about $200 million in funds left over from the 2000-2004 capital budget into the future projects.
When the MTA scrapped its LaGuardia Airport rail link project in 2004, an estimated $645 million was freed, of which half was used to buy buses for the private routes the MTA took over in 2004. Of the remaining $322.5 million, only one-third has been allocated – $40 million to a Yankee Stadium Metro-North station.
“It’s $300 million that could have been used to plug the gap in the new capital plan that was being developed, and yet the MTA just left it there,” Liu said, according to published reports.
Citing a lack of funds, the MTA cut 12 subway stations renovation projects from its 2005-2009 capital program. Liu questioned MTA officials why the leftover money was not used to renovate some of the city’s worst subway stations.
“That is absolutely unacceptable, and unconscionable. It smacks of having a slush fund on the side for the MTA,” Liu said.
MTA officials denied Liu’s accusations and defended funding decisions.
According to published reports, Michelle Goldstein, MTA director of government affairs, said that including the money into new projects required the approval of the State Capital Program Review Board, which includes Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“You can’t spend that capital money at the MTA board’s own discretion,” she said.