New York governor and mayor trade charges as transit chaos deepens
By
Fred Mazelis
26 July 2017
The longstanding feud between New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio erupted anew this week on the issue of accountability for the unprecedented and urgent crisis of mass transit in the New York metropolitan area.
With two derailments in the past month, increasingly unsafe conditions and daily disruptions that have provoked general outrage among commuters and other working people, Cuomo and de Blasio are frantically attempting to deny responsibility by pointing the finger at one another.
In the past few days, the warfare has taken the form of tit-for-tat exchanges between the mayor and Joseph Lhota, the newly appointed head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Cuomo, who nominates the MTA chief and controls the majority on the agency’s board, named Lhota a month ago. A few days later the governor declared a state of emergency on the city’s subways and directed Lhota, who had served an earlier stint as MTA chairman, to come up with a plan for reorganization of the system within 30 days.
That plan is due by the end of this week, and last Thursday Lhota held a press conference to demand the city furnish new money to solve the crisis.
On Friday Lhota stepped up his criticism. “Whenever there is a problem with the subway, the city just throws up its hands or sits on its hand,” he told the New York Times. Speaking directly of de Blasio, he added, “The lack of collaboration, the lack of empathy for the riders—his citizens—that is the issue here.”
The blunt attack on the mayor by the head of a state agency was very unusual, all the more because Lhota had said just one day earlier that he did not want his role to be viewed…