MTA Bailout Expected To Avert Layoffs, Aid TWU Arbitration Case

ED FIGUEROA: Happy that layoffs won't be needed.

The State Legislature's approval May 6 of a financial rescue package for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expected to avert major service cuts and more than 1,000 threatened layoffs at New York City Transit, and improves the chances of the transit unions getting raises consistent with those granted to municipal workers over the same basic period.

While Transport Workers Union Local 100 deferred comment on the impact of the bailout package, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1056 President Ed Figueroa, who represents bus workers in Queens, said NYC Transit President Howard H. Roberts had indicated the financial relief provided would stave off planned layoffs of bus workers and subway Station Agents.

'Good News'

"We're very happy about that; that's good news," Mr. Figueroa said.

While divisions in the State Senate— among both the Democratic majority and between Democrats and Republicans—torpedoed several previous proposals, the logjam was finally broken with a combination of measures including a payroll tax on employers within a 12-county region served by the MTA, a 50-cent surcharge on cab rides, and a roughly 10- percent increase in transit fares. For bus and subway riders, the fare will increase to $2.25, rather than the $2.50 the MTA previously voted to adopt, and the cost of monthly Metro- Cards will rise from $81 to $89.

SHELDON SILVER: Secures short-term capital funding.

The $2.3 billion in budget relief generated sharply changes the dynamic in the ongoing wage arbitration between Local 100 and the MTA. A week earlier, MTA officials announced that their budget woes made even a token wage increase unaffordable. With the agency's budget at least theoretically in balance as a result of Albany's action, that argument will be virtually impossible to sustain.

May Shift Focus to Patterns

While the MTA is still likely to cite ability to pay as a reason to limit any wage increases, the arbitration panel now is expected to give greater weight to the raises won by other public-employee unions. Municipal unions have in virtually all cases won wage hikes of 4 percent for at least the first two years of the three-year period under consideration, while state-employee unions have generally gotten raises of about 3 percent annually.

GENE RUSSIANOFF: Buys time for MTA.

MTA spokesmen last week did not comment on how the change in financial circumstances might change its position in the arbitration. It is also uncertain how the resignation May 7 of MTA Chief Executive Officer Elliot Sander will affect those discussions.

Under the bailout package, the CEO position and that of MTA Chairman are to be combined. Mr. Sander was appointed by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and there have been rumors since early spring that Governor Paterson might want to replace him with his own appointee.

Speaking to reporters in Atlanta prior to the Legislature's vote on the bailout package, Mayor Bloomberg said it was difficult to assess its impact on the MTA's finances without knowing what the agency had budgeted for collective-bargaining raises.

Need for a Happy Medium?

"If it's a high number, it's an outrage," the Mayor said. "If it's a low number, it's unrealistic."

He has been accused by Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, an old and bitter adversary, of blocking a contract deal last October that would have provided three 4-percent increases. Mr. Bloomberg had refused to give District Council 37 a third 4-percent hike at that same time, saying that it would be excessive given the decline in the city's own financial standing.

Mr. Bloomberg's initial reaction to the final MTA plan—which the State Assembly and Governor Paterson agreed to because it was the only one acceptable to the entire Democratic majority in the Senate (the 29 Republican Senators who voted against it had opposed previous proposals as well)—was to deride it as a "stop-gap" that delayed dealing with "the big problems."

A 2-Year Capital Plan

At the insistence of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a late addition to the package will fund the MTA's capital program over the next two years—something that was paid for by upping the fare increase from earlier proposals to raise it roughly 8 percent. In December, a commission headed by former MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch had sought to provide funding for a five-year capital program by imposing tolls on the East River and Harlem River bridges, but several Democratic State Senators rejected that plan, even when Mr. Silver proposed cutting the planned tolls by nearly half.

Straphangers Campaign attorney Gene Russianoff, a strong advocate for more transit funding, expressed relief that last week's deal would secure capital funding for the next two years. It is hoped, he continued, that the state's financial condition will improve enough over that time to generate funding for a capital program covering the following three years.

The Mayor, who contended that much of the capital spending now envisioned involves maintenance of existing structures that should actually be paid for from the MTA's operating budget, said, "We must invest in the system, even during economically difficult times, or buses, railcars, stations, signals and tracks will fall into disrepair and commuters will suffer— just as happened in the 1970s."