THE TROUBLE WITH THE MTA

The Trouble With The MTA

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is in an uncomfortable position regarding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Transport Workers' Union Local 100.

On the one hand, as the state's top civil law-enforcement official, Mr. Spitzer was responsible for seeking and getting severe penalties against Local 100 and two smaller Amalgamated Transit Union locals for last December's three-day transit strike. But he is also the overwhelming favorite to be elected Governor in November, and comments he has made over the past couple of months suggest both his disdain for MTA management and his awareness that its poor relations with Local 100 have deeper roots than the strike.

In a May 5 speech to the Regional Plan Association, Mr. Spitzer lamented the "truly astonishing" number of disciplinary actions taken against transit workers. While both sides bear some responsibility for fixing their relationship, he said, "it is the responsibility of those in leadership positions to manage that relationship so that we do not have 23 percent of the work force facing disciplinary proceedings."

Back in mid-March, Mr. Spitzer had said of the MTA, "I would be hard-pressed to find an organization that is more inept, more poorly run with revenue projections, [and where] the fundamental decision-making is more flawed."

It is clear that MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow, a longtime political ally of Governor Pataki's, will not survive the change of administrations if Mr. Spitzer is elected. What is less certain is whether Mr. Kalikow and his Albany patron are intent on leaving behind an agency with even worse relations with the MTA's largest union than already exist.

Mr. Kalikow has balked at holding a vote on the contract deal he reached with Local 100 President Roger Toussaint back in December, arguing that it was voided when the union's rank and file rejected it by a seven-vote margin in January. Beyond that legal position, however, there are two obvious reasons he has taken this hard line: Mr. Pataki's opposition to a piece of the contract that would guarantee a pension refund to current Local 100 members who were on the job prior to 2001, either through legislation or directly from the MTA's coffers; and the Governor's slender hopes of gaining the Republican nomination for President.

As Local 100 noted in a lawsuit it filed last week seeking to have the contract put to a vote in the wake of its acceptance by union members in a re-vote, there have been three occasions over the past 28 years when the MTA honored a re-vote and approved a contract deal. One of them, a 1999 contract with ATU Local 726, occurred with Mr. Pataki as Governor. Mr. Kalikow was MTA Vice Chairman at the time; the Chairman was another longtime Pataki confidant, Virgil Conway.

In that instance, the first vote, which was completed in February 2000, ended in a tie, prompting the local to order a re-vote. Larry Hanley, then the head of Local 726 and currently a vice president of the International ATU, said he was actually encouraged to hold the re-vote by the man who both then and now was the MTA's chief negotiator, Gary Dellaverson. Asked what made things different on that occasion from the current situation, Mr. Hanley told this newspaper's Ginger Adams Otis, "Governor Pataki wasn't running for President."

Mr. Pataki may earn points with national Republicans for getting tough with a union that struck and its militant president. There are real questions, however, as Mr. Spitzer strongly hinted, that what plays well inside the GOP is good for the city, the state or the MTA.

Until Mr. Pataki resigns as Governor - an unlikely occurrence - or his term ends, he is supposed to be acting in the best interests of the state. That does not appear to be happening in this case. But if Local 100 were to follow Mr. Pataki onto the campaign trail, its attempt to embarrass him among Republican voters in early primary states might backfire. Mayor Bloomberg has urged both sides to return to bargaining, but he clearly is not - given his contentious relationship with Mr. Toussaint - going to openly criticize the Governor over the continuing impasse.

And so unless Mr. Toussaint can persuade his friends at the police and fire unions to make clear to Mr. Pataki that they won't support his national run if he bases on it prolonging the war with Local 100, there may be no pressure that could be applied to the Governor that would have a positive effect. Staking slim national aspirations on a reputation for poisonous dealings with a union doesn't say much for the Governor, but it's looking more and more like a plank of his candidacy.