The E-ZPass gravy train has come to a grinding halt.
MTA board members will no longer receive free travel passes for life as a perk after unanimously voting this morning to repeal the decades-old privilege.
Current members will retain their passes but they can be used only for official agency business.
“There’s no one here who took the position because they were getting these passes,” said MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger. “Most everyone – including myself – didn’t know we were getting it.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority planned the change after coming under pressure last month from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
The vote was 12-0, with one member abstaining.
State law requires that board members, who are not paid, serve “without salary or other compensation.”
Cuomo said the subway passes – plus free E-ZPass tags that automatically pay tolls on the agency’s nine bridges and tunnels – counted as compensation.
The board spent over an hour debating the change behind closed doors before a public vote was taken.
“We got the issues behind us as quickly as possible,” Hemmerdinger said.
James Sedore, who represents Dutchess County, abstained, while two other members, Andrew Saul, a vice chairman of the board who represents Westchester County, and Robert Bickford, who represents Putnam County, were absent.
Before the vote, Warren Dolny, a former board member who served from 1989 to 1996, called on the agency to maintain the perks.
“How can you take away something that you gave somebody?” he asked the stone-faced panel.