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Gov.Hochul owes New Yorkers an apology.
For months she’s been promising to put “money back in your pockets.” It turns out she actually meant to say she’s determined to take more money out of your pockets and give it to the MTA. And why? Because the MTA has big holes in its pockets and the more money she puts in there, the more money the agency needs. So pay up, suckers.The gang that can’t shoot straight needs another bundle of your cash. Hochul has been in office since August of 2021 and only one in three voters say they plan to vote for her next year. All of which is to say it’s awfully late in the day for her to be making rookie mistakes and getting hoodwinked by the bureaucracy.
And those are the kindest possible explanations for her total mismanagement of the MTA’s finances. The agency is a sinkhole for honest New Yorkers’ money, and the governor either doesn’t know how to fix it or doesn’t care.Neither is acceptable. The latest evidence of malpractice comes from the Post report that deadbeat drivers skipped out on the agency’s bridge and tunnel tolls to the tune of $5.1 billion over four years, including $1.4 billion last year alone. And that staggering sum is in addition to the nearly $800 million the MTA lost because bus and subway riders refused to pay their fares last year.
It’s an epidemic of cheating, with nearly half of riders not paying on some bus routes. Combined, the toll and fare losses hit a mind-blowing total of $2.2 billion in a single year! Have you heard even a peep of outrage or apology from the governor or anybody else in Albany? Of course not. They hope nobody notices or, more importantly, holds them accountable. Their silence doubles the scandal and, unfortunately, offers a perfect case study of how the state’s fiscal house is riddled with waste and fraud. The $252 billion budget Hochul proposed for the new fiscal year represents an increase of $110 billion over the last decade.And the total will g...