New York City and State Reach Agreement on M.T.A. Capital Plan
By EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS and ALEXANDER BURNS
OCT. 10, 2015
After months of tense debate over financing for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, state and city officials on Saturday announced a deal to pay for the agency’s five-year capital plan, with New York City agreeing to sharply increase its contribution to the M.T.A. to $2.5 billion.
The deal resolves a long and publicly contentious standoff between Gov.Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio over whether the city should pay significantly more toward the $29 billion plan, which will cover the cost of maintenance and improvements to the authority’s network of subways, buses and commuter rail lines.
Under the agreement, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, pledged $8.3 billion in state funds to the authority. The city had initially agreed to provide $657 million, but senior aides in the de Blasio administration had recently held negotiations with representatives of the authority and the governor’s office over increasing the city’s contribution.
The final deal follows the broad outlines of a proposal offered in July by Thomas F. Prendergast, the chairman of the M.T.A., who suggested a framework that called for the state to contribute $8.3 billion and the city to contribute $3.2 billion.
In recent weeks, Mr. Prendergast, who was reappointed by Mr. Cuomo this year, had grown increasingly combative toward Mr. de Blasio, repeatedly calling on the city to pay more toward the capital plan.
Mr. de Blasio had said that as part of any agreement, he wanted assurances that the city’s contribution to the state-run authority would not be siphoned off and redirected to the state budget. City officials had urged Mr. Cuomo to provide more details about how the state would pay its share and argued that the city should have more say in which projects were addressed in the capital plan.
In a joint statement outlining the deal, Mr. Cuomo, city and state officials said on Saturday that New York’s $2.5 billion contribution would pay for projects in the city “with priority consideration given for projects and timing based on input” from New York City.
In announcing the agreement, both Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo backed away from the often-heated rhetoric they have used lately when discussing the M.T.A. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a statement that the $2.5 billion contribution by the city represented an “historic investment — the city’s largest ever general capital contribution — while ensuring that New York City dollars stay in New York transit.”
The deal, Mr. Cuomo said in a statement, “would not have been possible without everyone stepping up to pay their fair share.”
“Today with this agreement, we are making an historic investment not only in the M.T.A., but in the future of New York,” he said.
The capital plan will pay for a series of projects across the system: new train cars and buses; updated signal systems that would allow more trains to run; countdown clocks for the lettered subway lines; and the next phase of the Second Avenue subway line. The upgrades come at a critical time for the authority: The city’s aging subway system is struggling to handle booming ridership and has experienced rising delays and overcrowding.
The authority has faced months of uncertainty over the capital plan, which officials said had been subject to an unprecedented delay. After a subway derailment in Brooklyn last month, Mr. Prendergast forcefully urged the city to pay more for the plan, noting that it would allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to repair and rebuild subway structures, including tunnel walls like the one involved in the crash.
Rider advocacy groups and Transport Workers Union Local 100, the union that represents subway and bus workers, had also pressed the city to increase its funding. And a report by the city’s Independent Budget Office found that the city’s payments to the capital plan over the years had not kept pace with inflation.
With the city’s final contribution falling short of Mr. Prendergast’s $3.2 billion request, an M.T.A. spokesman said on Saturday that the authority would engage in a “serious effort” to wring $700 million in additional savings from the transit system.
The spokesman, Adam Lisberg, said the authority was “confident we can reach that without any major cuts.”