The MTA’s current governance structure is led by a 23-person Board of Directors. The chair of that board also serves as the CEO of the agency (though a recent attempt to split the roles proved unsuccessful). All board members are nominated by the Governor, but some are done so on the recommendation of various other municipalities or groups. The county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester each get to recommend one member, the county executives of Putnam, Dutchess, Orange, and Rockland each recommend one member, but these four cast just one collective vote. The Mayor of New York City recommends four. The PCAC organizations (the NYCT Riders Council, LIRR Commuter Council, and the MNR Commuter Council), as well as the UTU, TWU, and Metro-North Unions each recommend one member who has a voice but no vote. This means that while there are 23 people sitting in the room, there are just 14 votes.
All members are subject to confirmation by the New York State Senate. Once confirmed, members sit for terms of 6 years. This recommendation-nomination-confirmation process is full of problems, and it obfuscates responsibility and accountability. While the local officials are free to recommend whoever they want, the Governor must ultimately nominate them, and there’s no requirement the Governor nominate whomever is recommended…the Governor can just elect not to submit the nomination, holding the seat vacant. The actual nomination and confirmation process is not a big deal at all—the State Senate usually confirms hundreds of appointees to various boards and authorities without any discussion, but these mass waves of confirmations typically come only in the last hours of the legislative session, which ends in June. That means if a suitable name is not submitted by time it comes to do the wave of confirmations in June, that seat isn’t getting filled until the next rush the following June.
Artifacts of the process like these mean that seats can go unfilled for an extended period of time. Take the example of the Nassau County seat on the MTA Board…political missteps last spring have meant that the seat casting half of Long Island’s votes on the MTA Board has been vacant since John Molloy stepped down from the position last year.
All told, five seats on the MTA Board, plus the permanent chair and CEO seat, are vacant. Eight additional seats are occupied by holdover members—members whose terms have formally expired, but continue to occupy the seat and vote until they are either reconfirmed or replaced. So of the 23 members on a full MTA Board, they cast a total of just 14 votes, of which only at most 10.5 of those votes could be cast now, due to vacancies. If you count only the votes of members confirmed to active terms, you would have just 7.5 votes.
While overall I think the MTA Board does a pretty decent job, given the extraordinary conditions they need to try and govern under, this is clearly not a model for success.
If the MTA is to be broken apart and rebuilt, it’s governance structure needs to be reassessed too. The directors or trustees of the entity need to be able to do their jobs and provide oversight, free from many of the constraints that limit their ability to do their jobs now. The process that gets the right people to the MTA Board needs to be more streamlined and subject less to political tampering.
The sections that follow outline some possible governance structures for Regional Transportation Council, a suburban-focused entity that deals with coordinating all mass transportation services in a particular area. In the case of dissolving the MTA, the LIRR and Metro-North would be best split off into two entities: a Long Island Regional Transportation Council, and a Hudson Valley Regional Transportation Council, which would join with all local transit currently operating in the respective suburbs.
While I am by no means an expert in municipal governance, I have been observing and interacting with many different levels of government for many years and have seen what, in rare occasions, works well and what, more often, doesn’t work. There is no perfect governance or organizational structure, but the examples below are based off what is used elsewhere in the United States (and beyond), what is used at other levels of local government in New York, and prior proposals for transportation governance reform (including the structure of the proposed Peconic Bay Regional Transportation Council for the East End).
Click the titles below to expand each example:
Council districts model
The first governance model builds upon how school districts function in most of New York State. There is a board of trustees (or councilors, in this case), made up of people elected as representatives from the local community, and they form the primary decision-making bodies for the entity. The direct election of councilors bypasses all of the troubles with the recommendation-nomination-confirmation process, and is similar to what’s used on the RTD Board of Directors in Denver.
One of the councilor’s key decisions is to choose and employ a superintendent, who votes with the council and is charged with managing the day-to-day operations of all transportation services as part of the council. The superintendent works directly for the council (and, by extension, the people) and may be hired or fired as a majority of the councilors see fit. The appointment of a superintendent allows the council to seek out and employ an expert in the field, and have one person managing the day-to-day operations (as opposed to the councilors, who would most likely be part-time in nature and not necessarily have an extensive background in transportation). Like school districts, the council would focus on the ends, the overall outcomes, strategy, and performance-based objectives for the entity. The superintendent would be focused on the ways and means to go about achieving those ends. The council as a whole (including all councilors and the superintendent) still have the final vote on items like contracts, service levels, and financial matters (similar to the structure of the MTA Board now, though, hopefully, with less latitude). The council sets policy, the superintendent translates that policy into action.
In this model, councilors would be elected by a vote of the people, from one of nine council districts on Long Island (seven council districts in the Hudson Valley). The boundaries of the regional transportation council districts would coincide with those of the State Senate districts. This would allow for councilors to represent districts of roughly equal proportions, and, at the same time, allow for the views of the entire region to be taken into account in the decision-making process.
In addition to the nine councilors from Long Island (and seven from the Hudson Valley), one additional member would be elected to each council from all of New York City, to represent their interests on the councils. That additional seat plus the superintendent would bring the total number of votes to 11 on Long Island, and 9 in the Hudson Valley. Councilors would be elected to 4-year terms that coincide with those of other county-wide officials (see the example schedule below...). The superintendent does not have a fixed term, and can be removed and replaced by a majority of the council at any given time.
One of the councilor’s key decisions is to choose and employ a superintendent, who votes with the council and is charged with managing the day-to-day operations of all transportation services as part of the council. The superintendent works directly for the council (and, by extension, the people) and may be hired or fired as a majority of the councilors see fit. The appointment of a superintendent allows the council to seek out and employ an expert in the field, and have one person managing the day-to-day operations (as opposed to the councilors, who would most likely be part-time in nature and not necessarily have an extensive background in transportation). Like school districts, the council would focus on the ends, the overall outcomes, strategy, and performance-based objectives for the entity. The superintendent would be focused on the ways and means to go about achieving those ends. The council as a whole (including all councilors and the superintendent) still have the final vote on items like contracts, service levels, and financial matters (similar to the structure of the MTA Board now, though, hopefully, with less latitude). The council sets policy, the superintendent translates that policy into action.
In this model, councilors would be elected by a vote of the people, from one of nine council districts on Long Island (seven council districts in the Hudson Valley). The boundaries of the regional transportation council districts would coincide with those of the State Senate districts. This would allow for councilors to represent districts of roughly equal proportions, and, at the same time, allow for the views of the entire region to be taken into account in the decision-making process.
In addition to the nine councilors from Long Island (and seven from the Hudson Valley), one additional member would be elected to each council from all of New York City, to represent their interests on the councils. That additional seat plus the superintendent would bring the total number of votes to 11 on Long Island, and 9 in the Hudson Valley. Councilors would be elected to 4-year terms that coincide with those of other county-wide officials (see the example schedule below...). The superintendent does not have a fixed term, and can be removed and replaced by a majority of the council at any given time.
Seats | Cycle (terms start on January 1...) |
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 | 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2032, etc. |
6, 7, 8, 9, 10 | 2018, 2022, 2026, 2030, 2034, etc. |
Council at large model
The council at large model would work similar to the council district model, just instead of electing councilors by districts of roughly equal proportion, a group of councilors are elected at large, either county-wide (five seats in Suffolk, four seats in Nassau, one seat in New York City), or Island-wide. This may improve the quality of representation on the council (since you are not strictly limited to one person per arbitrary geographical area), but does run the risk of losing a region-wide focus, since you can have a majority of the councilors from one part of the Island.
Ex officio model
The elected council models have some merit, since they put the power to change transportation policy directly in the hands of the people, instead of having other elected officials appoint people (as what’s common practice now). That's not to say the appointee method is completely bad, just that most people are not single-issue voters, so it can be difficult to effectuate change at the ballot box in any one particular area, especially one not often at the top of the issue list, like transportation. One candidate in an election may have particularly poor transportation plans or policies, but you might vote for them anyways since they are still better than their opponent overall.
In the ex officio model, which is most closely modeled on the proposed structure of the PBRTC, the “seats” are formally held by the elected officials or bodies themselves, by right of their office. But since most officials have better things to do than deal with the nitty, gritty details of running a transportation entity, they would designate someone they choose to act in their place.
While using council districts makes proportional representation easy (since district boundaries don’t need to correspond with other political boundaries), the ex officio model can result in unequal representation, though this can be managed to some extent. The two lists below outline how the seats could be potentially allocated:
Long Island Regional Transportation Council
10-member council, consisting of members or representatives appointed by the following entities, and who shall serve at his/her/their pleasure:
Hudson Valley Regional Transportation Council
8-member council, consisting of members or representatives appointed by the following entities, and who shall serve at his/her/their pleasure:
In the ex officio model, which is most closely modeled on the proposed structure of the PBRTC, the “seats” are formally held by the elected officials or bodies themselves, by right of their office. But since most officials have better things to do than deal with the nitty, gritty details of running a transportation entity, they would designate someone they choose to act in their place.
While using council districts makes proportional representation easy (since district boundaries don’t need to correspond with other political boundaries), the ex officio model can result in unequal representation, though this can be managed to some extent. The two lists below outline how the seats could be potentially allocated:
Long Island Regional Transportation Council
10-member council, consisting of members or representatives appointed by the following entities, and who shall serve at his/her/their pleasure:
- Governor
- Mayor of New York City
- Suffolk County Executive
- Nassau County Executive
- Town of Hempstead Board
- One member chosen by a joint vote of the town board of the Town of Brookhaven, and the town supervisors of the Towns of Riverhead, Southold, Shelter Island, Southampton, and East Hampton
- One member chosen by a joint vote of the town board of the Town of Islip, the town supervisor of the Town of Smithtown, and the town board of the Town of Smithtown (which shall cast one collective vote)
- One member chosen by a joint vote of the town board of the Towns of Huntington and Babylon
- One member chosen by a joint vote of the town board of the Towns of Hempstead and North Hempstead
- One member chosen by a joint vote of the town board of the Town of Oyster Bay, the mayor of the City of Long Beach, and the mayor of the City of Glen Cove.
Hudson Valley Regional Transportation Council
8-member council, consisting of members or representatives appointed by the following entities, and who shall serve at his/her/their pleasure:
- Governor
- Mayor of New York City
- Westchester County Executive
- Rockland County Executive
- Orange County Executive
- One member chosen by a joint vote of the city mayors of Westchester County
- One member chosen by a joint vote of the town supervisors of Westchester County
- One member chosen by a joint vote of the Dutchess County Executive, the Dutchess County Legislature (which shall cast one collective vote), the town supervisors and city mayors of Dutchess County (which shall cast one collective vote), and the Putnam County Executive
The bottom line: regardless of which method is chosen in an MTA organization/restructure, it is important that there is sufficient independence and oversight to make sure that the best decisions can be made with what would be best for the riders in mind.
