Here, Mikey, here’s a nice starting point for you:

http://mta.info/mta/budget/
http://mta.info/mta/ind-finance/

If you have any other questions, you can attend the MTA’s Finance Committee meetings. They’re open to the public and the next one occurs on Monday, April 27th.

It’s amazing what you can find by simply going to the MTA’s web site and following links on the front page. I bet it would surprise a certain few of our State Senators, too.

Do you read the subway from an outer borough into Manhattan? Do you ride the subway intra-Manhattan? You’re already paying a toll then to enter, leave and get around. Keeping the East River Bridges free just makes no sense.

But none of that matters. This is still about everybody drinking the MTA kool-aid about “doomsday” without coming clean in a forensic audit. I think the Senate is on to something with that. There plan produced operating money and said it would address the capital expenses AFTER the audit.

Anybody curious if the MTA is being stuck with a billion or so in penalty payments because AIG was there mortgage insurer? Maybe we ought to find out. The MTA’s scare tactics are right up there with the Bush administration’s Alert Color Codes. Open up the books.

Now if State Senator Montgomery could really see the light and wholeheartedly endorse bridge tolls!

I have testified on record before the the Congestion Pricing Commission in person and in writing in favor of tolling the bridges. I testified in January at the MTA Brooklyn hearing. I have specifically and repeatedly endorsed the Ravitch Plan.

I have personally lobbied Bill deBlasio, Joan Millman, Marty Connor (then) and Dan Squadron (now) in favor of congestion pricing and my preferred solution, bridge tolls. I have written to David Paterson and Malcolm Smith to demand action, including tolls. And I have called Senate Majority leader Smith’s AND Minority Leader Skelos’s offices to denounce the inaction from the Senate, again specifically calling for tolls.

And I would bet I have endorsed tolls on more than one occasion in the Streetsblog comments and on my own blog, http://firstandcourt.blogspot.com.

So . . . just putting that out there. Thank you Streetsblog and all the transit/livable streets activists who are making a difference out there.

I have loudly and repeatedly endorsed bridge tolls dedicated to funding the MTA, along with other dedicated funding, such as fees and fines from residential parking permits. I have specifically called for bridge tolls at parity with the existing tolled crossings, such as the Battery Tunnel.

Gary

Are you referring to me?

As I’ve written extensively elsewhere, some form of doomsday is going to visited on somebody, or everybody, now or in the near future as a result of self-serving, shortsighted decisions in the past.

So I see everything that is going on now as posturing to avoid blame.

Anyone who wants to claim to be a hero (or, more accurately, fellow victim since heroes by definition succeed) needs to go back three, five, eight, ten years and show what they did or try to do to prevent this.

“Final legislation must permanently keep these tolls at the level of subway fares”

Weak, but I’ll take it. Legislation can be introduced later to change this to be more equitable (charge drivers much more).