Press Release
Why I am Voting “No” on the MTA Operating Budget
Statement by CSS President and CEO David R. Jones
When I was nominated to the MTA Board, I told the mayor that making the public transit system more affordable and accessible, particularly for the city’s working poor, would be my top priority.
I am pleased that my tenure on the board overlapped with the city’s adoption of “Fair Fares,” the half-priced bus and subway program for city residents with incomes at or below poverty. What has not been particularly gratifying as a board member is coming to terms with the agency’s argument for a crackdown on fare evasion.
In 2016 when I joined the board, I was presented with MTA documents that indicated that more than 90 percent of the stops and arrests in the subway were of people of color. Since then, it has become pretty evident that fare evasion enforcement in our transit system is deliberately concentrated in poor communities, and targets black and Latinx commuters.
Today, the MTA will ask the Board to approve the hiring of 500 additional police officers to address quality of life issues including fare evasion, at a cost of $249 million over four years. It is part of a $19 billion operating budget that requires Board approval.
I will be voting “No” on the budget and the hiring of additional police officers. In good conscience, I cannot support a budget that would allocate scarce public funds for more police when the argument for adding more law enforcement resources is so dubious. The MTA claims that fare evasion is on the rise and they need to rein it in to provide better service. If fare evasion is indeed on the rise – which is not obvious given the lack of credibility of the MTA’s survey methods – any viable solution must address the economic need that often drives people to do it.
That aside, the claim made by some that the 500 additional police are needed to combat an increase in crime has been proven to be untrue. The fact is crime is decreasing in the subway. Moreover, at a time when the MTA is dealing with a structural deficit and putting off other needs of the system such as improving transit services for the disabled, adding another quarter of a billion dollars to an already overburdened system is fiscally irresponsible. This budget, by the way, doesn’t include costs associated with the recent transit workers settlement.
Our police officers should be focusing on real threats to the transit system. Not being deployed to hide behind columns to catch someone jumping a turnstile. Before we spend more money to police the turnstile, let’s expedite the Fair Fares program, which has already reached nearly 100,000 low-income residents and is expected to reach another 600,000 low-income New Yorkers in the coming year. And while we’re at it, let’s invest in fixing chronically broken ticketing machines and make it easier for riders to pay at bus stops across the city.
As I see it, the MTA has a choice: They can police the poor and criminalize poverty under the guise of making the system safer. Or they can make the system run better by directing limited resources to where they are truly needed.