I was watching this story with a great deal of interest. It seems the MTA (that would be the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the organization that runs public transportation in NYC) was giving free EZ Pass tags to its board members, past and present. Paid for. By the MTA. For life.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo got wind of it and pointed out that the 7 board members are supposed to serve for free, and that any compensation of board members is against New York State law. As of yesterday, the MTA said that the tags were not a violation of state law and that they’d be fighting if that’s what Attorney General Cuomo wanted.

The MTA blinked.

Sort of.

In light of Attorney General Cuomo’s opinion, the MTA will amend its longstanding practice of issuing free passes on the agency’s transit network to its current and former board members.

Subject to approval of its Board, the MTA would rescind its policy of issuing free lifetime passes on its operating systems to former board members. Hereafter, pursuant to the MTA’s enabling legislation, active board members may only utilize passes on the transit network to the extent that such use constitutes actual and necessary expenses incurred in the performance of their official MTA duties.

There are two problems here. For one, the MTA board, the recipient of the free tags, now has to vote on whether or not to take them away from themselves. The second problem is that they still get to keep the tags, but only are allowed to use them for official business. As anyone who lives in this city knows, perks like free tolls, free Metrocards, and free parking placards are rarely only used for “business purposes,” so my question to the MTA is who’s going to keep an eye out and monitor for compliance if the board does, in fact, decide to put the kibosh on its free tolls?

It’s a good start, especially for an agency that’s in an insane amount of debt, raising fares, and putting nothing back into the system that turned 100 two years ago. As was proven a few years back, one homeless man with a lit rag brought the entire 8th avenue line to its knees for weeks. It’s time to stop sinking the money into perks for the board, and start putting it into the system.