A report Tuesday by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli notes that MTA fare and toll hikes have been far outpacing inflation.
Alas, it spends little time on a key reason for the hikes: rising labor costs.
Since 2007, the report notes, MTA fares and tolls have shot up 21.4 percent — about twice inflation. More hikes on tap, it says, are triple the projected jump in the CPI and will leave fares and tolls 35 percent higher in 2015 than they were in 2007.
But DiNapoli, a cat’s paw of New York unions, devotes just eight words to one of the main factors driving the hikes: “Labor costs rose because of an arbitration award.”
The award he’s referring to — 11.3 percent over three years for unionized staff — came in 2009, at the height of the recession.
It was itself many multiples of inflation.
Indeed, MTA officials estimate that the pay hikes cost riders some $200 million a year more than if they had been held to the inflation rate.
That’s more than half the expected revenue from next year’s fare hike — or more than 120 million free rides, based on the average after-discount fare of $1.63.
It’s also nearly seven times the $30 million amount the agency is setting aside to restore some of the recent service cuts.
Plus, wages are but one of several mushrooming labor-related expenses (including health-care costs, pensions and other retiree benefits) that drove up fares and tolls.
Speaking of retirees, it’s worth noting that DiNapoli, to the unions’ delight, has staunchly opposed pension reform. And last March’s Albany deal to curb pension costs exempted the MTA’s union employees.
Guess what? MTA pension costs “have grown relatively rapidly in recent years,” DiNapoli’s own report says.
Meanwhile, the comptroller cites the MTA’s “improved” short-term financial outlook. But a more useful analysis might have screamed about the agency’s looming long-term woes — when labor costs become downright unaffordable, nudging out vital repair and upgrade projects.
At that point, riders might well wish fare hikes needed to keep the system on track were “just” three times inflation.