The following appeared on Monday, September 16, 2024, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

On Sept. 12, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli released a report assessing the MTA’s “capital needs and funding scenarios.”

Its findings should surprise no one. To enact the overwhelming list of capital improvement needs, the report concludes “The MTA must find billions in new funds even as the state tries to resolve the $15 billion gap in revenues created by the pause on congestion pricing.”

Essential capital projects include:

• $1.78 billion for repairs of line structures, depots and yards.
• $2.75 billion for normal replacement of railcars and buses.
• $5.65 billion for accessibility and signal modernization.
• $5.23 billion for the expansion of the Second Avenue subway.
• $5.67 billion for administrative, communication and power modernization.

The MTA’s total capital needs during the next five years range “from $57.8 billion to $93.2 billion, with a midpoint of about $75 billion. But whether the MTA’s capital program comes in at the low end or the high end of that estimate, it will need significant amounts of new funding….”

So how is the MTA going to fund the much-needed capital projects?

First of all, taxpayers should not rule out the resurrection of congestion pricing.

Gov, Kathy Hochul’s surprise announcement in June to suspend the congestion pricing that was slated to commence on July 1 was a political decision — not a financial one.

Hochul’s June 5 statement that “I cannot add another burden to working, middle-class New Yorkers or create another obstacle to our continued economic recovery” was empty political rhetoric. She did not want to be blamed for voter backlash against Democratic congressional candidates at the polls in November.

However, it appears she has been scheming to bring back congestion pricing post-election day.

The New York Post reported Aug. 18 that “Governor Hochul is considering proposing a lower congestion toll for Manhattan and nixing it all together for municipal workers such as cops and teachers.”

And I won’t be surprised if there are additional exemptions, for example, medical professionals.

But tax revenues from the modified congestion pricing will not be enough to fund MTA capital projects.

The DiNapoli report suggests that fare and toll increases over the next five years could be between 13% and 18%. It also points out that more state and city tax dollars will have to be turned over to the MTA. The state’s contribution for the 2025-2029 Capital Plan is estimated in the range of $8.8 billion to $29 billion. The city’s contribution could range from $2 billion to $4 billion.

But before raising fares and tolls, maybe the MTA should address the direct causes of its soaring costs: overly generous union contracts that cost $7.8 billion annually, huge cost overruns, prevailing wage laws that force MTA contractors to pay above market rates to the tune of $95 per hour, and fare beaters.

The MTA recently admitted that last year it lost $600 million to fare evasion. (The comptroller puts it at $700 million.) More than 48% of bus passengers do not pay their fares—up from 18% in 2018. Nearly 1 million commuters a day get a free ride.

This is even too much for The New York Times. Pamela Paul wrote in her Sept. 6 Times column, “Taking the City for a Ride:” “The truth is passengers don’t pay because they can get away with it. The hottest truth is that the city lets them.” Pamela concluded: “The best resolution is more policing.” (For The Times to call for more policing is an incredible acknowledgement.)

If the MTA cracked down on fare beaters, the increased revenue would contribute significantly to salvaging the MTA Capital funding problem.

But will that happen? I doubt it. It is easier to stick fare-paying working class commuters with the tab for the MTA’s incompetence.

The following appeared on Monday, August 19, 2024, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

In recent months, reports released to the public have highlighted the incompetence and mismanagement of bureaucrats in the state government and its agencies. Here’s a sampling of the findings:

In June, an audit report released by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli revealed that Medicaid payments went to providers not enrolled in the program to the tune of $1.5 billion. That’s a lot of misappropriated taxpayer money.

“The deadline for managed care organizations and their providers to comply with enrollment requirements was over five years ago, yet our audit shows payments to the providers that are still not enrolled in Medicaid or have been denied,” DiNapoli said.

It appears that state Department of Health workers have been asleep at their desks since the federal government’s 21st Century Cures Act mandated that in-network managed care providers were required to be enrolled in Medicare by Jan. 1, 2018.

“DOH’s inability to determine the extent of unenrolled or excluded providers who are still doing business with the state,” the DiNapoli report concluded, “puts Medicaid patients and taxpayers at risk.”

What’s the DOH’s excuse for this massive five-year failure? The department “has not developed the infrastructure to accurately review MCO’s compliance with the act.”

That lame excuse is unacceptable. It’s inconceivable that it has taken more than five years to design a check list.

What were the ramifications of this multibillion-dollar snafu? Apparently, none. No one has been fired or called on the carpet for the DOH’s malfeasance.

In late July, Comptroller DiNapoli informed the public that a $4.3 million independent study that Gov. Hochul commissioned to examine the state’s COVID-19 response is “riddled with errors and does not help the state prepare for the next pandemic.”

The 262-page report by the Olsen group, a Virginia-based consulting firm, DiNapoli notes, “relied on flawed or unvalidated data and at times was interpreted incorrectly, resulting in erroneous conclusions.”

The most glaring error concerns data related to nursing home deaths.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services statistics, utilized by the Olsen group, undercounted the COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. Hence, the Olsen report’s conclusion that there were 70.9 deaths per thousand nursing home recipients was wrong.

DiNapoli pointed out that the state’s DOH data, which is more accurate, indicates “New York’s nursing home death rate was nearly double at 135 per thousand residents ranking us among the very worst states.”

Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center think tank in Albany, agrees with DiNapoli’s analysis. He said the Olsen group’s after-action review “has proven to be thinly researched, poorly written, sloppily presented and riddled with factual errors large and small. It falls embarrassingly short of the deep, authoritative analysis that Gov. Hochul promised—and which the state desperately needs to arm itself against future viruses….”

The New York Post called it right when it declared “the Swiss-cheese-like Hochul report was a slap in the face to all New Yorkers, especially the families of the 83,000 New Yorkers who died during the COVID-19 pandemic.  It was also a monumental waste of money.”

As you might have guessed, the Hochul administration has failed to publicly address the flawed report.

Another audit report by DiNapoli indicated that “poor oversight and bureaucratic delays in New York State’s gold-standard program for treating mentally ill people at risk of becoming violent have led in recent years to preventable injuries and even deaths.”

Which department failed to make sure the court-ordered treatment to individuals be delivered in a timely manner: the state’s Office of Mental Health.

Can the Hochul administration get anything right?

Here’s one more example of censurable government behavior:  The top scofflaw in owing New York City water bills is—New York State.

“The top three non-paying customers,” the mayor’s office told The New York Times, “are the state-controlled Metropolitan Transit Authority, Riverbank State Park on Manhattan’s West Side, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.”

The total due is $76.5 million.

As the French say, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”—the more things change, the more they stay the same.”