Opinion

Where the MTA must slash

Jay Walder marked the end of his first 100 days as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority last week by issuing an aptly titled report: “Making Every Dollar Count.”

He’s on the right, uh . . . track.

There’s nothing more important for the cash-shy MTA than fiscal stability. Indeed, yesterday Walder cited even further declines in tax revenues for the agency.

He’s surely got a heavy lift ahead.

“The MTA is long overdue for a major, top-to-bottom overhaul,” the report said. “The organizational structure must be dissected and reassembled to get the most out of every . . . dollar.”

It calls for making the system more efficient, cutting management and administrative costs and “maximizing investments.”

Who’d object to that?

And Walder is vowing to find “better and less expensive ways to do essential work.” Well — hear, hear.

At the same time, he insists that current economic and financial constraints mustn’t be allowed to stymie service improvements and infrastructure upgrades.

Right again.

But achieving a “lean and mean” operation will be hard. Best place to start slashing: labor costs.

Do Walder & Co. get that? They call on “labor organizations to work with us to identify opportunities for savings.”

Good luck with that one, Jay. You can be sure the Transport Workers Union has no intention of agreeing to “savings” taken from its members’ pockets.

The union took to the streets just last fall, after the agency merely asked a court to review an arbitration award granting a 11.3 percent pay hike.

Most of that hike is now taking effect — even though MTA employees are already among the most generously paid public-sector employees around.

Walder’s certainly got his heart in the right place. Now he needs to fix his eyes on the right problem: labor.