Suffer Little Children

Mattingly Leaves ACS,

Presided Over Tragedies

But Reformed the Agency.

Judge Richter Is Successor.

John B. Mattingly is retiring as Commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) after seven years in the trenches. At the age of 66, he will return to the child welfare foundation he headed in Baltimore.

His departure is in striking contrast to Jay Walder's jumping ship after 21 months at the MTA to take a far more lucrative position running a railroad in the Orient. Yet Walder may have performed a service by his surprise exit. His manner had alienated many of the people he had to deal with, and the financial chasm between receipts and expenditures had only widened, although through no fault of Walder's.

John Mattingly stayed for the long haul in what is probably the most thankless position in city government. You get into the news only when a child under your protection is murdered, usually by the mother's boyfriend, or when the child starves to death after months or years of neglect and abuse. The more grotesque the death, the more attention it receives in the media, and the more people are shocked by the tragedy, which can often be traced to the negligence or incompetence of employees of the Administration for Children's Services.

The nadir in this agency came five and one half years ago, when the police found the lifeless and emaciated body of Nixzmary Brown in an apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. We reported on the case on January 13, 2006, and you can read our analysis of the situation by clicking here. We reproduce the headline over the story.

TORTURE AND MURDER OF A 7-YEAR OLD GIRL
LIVING WITH FAMILY UNDER ACS SUPERVISION
LEADS TO DEMANDS FOR FULL INVESTIGATION
AND REVIEW OF ACS' FAMILY-FIRST ATTITUDE.

With additional information, we wrote another article five days later, which you can read here. By January 18, similar horror stories were coming to light. This was the headline on the second article:

OBSERVATIONS ON THE DEATH OF AN AMIABLE CHILD,
TORTURED BY ADULTS AND IGNORED BY AUTHORITIES.

The reference to an amiable child is from the caption on a small statue in Riverside Park, just west of Grant's Tomb, which commemorates the life of St. Claire Pollock, a young boy who, on July 15, 1797, fell to his death from the edge of a cliff overlooking the Hudson River. We feel sadness over the centuries at the loss of an innocent child. When the tragedy is caused in part by official misconduct, people feel anger as well as sorrow.

A roster of murdered children appeared in a third story, which was published on January 23. Compare the unusual, hopeful names their mothers gave them with their sordid and pitiful deaths. Click here to read the article headlined:

SIERRA, DAHQUAY, JOZIAH, NIXZMARY;
FOUR CHILDREN DIE IN FOUR MONTHS
WHILE UNDER THE CARE OF CITY ACS.

That column, which is almost lyrical in tone, begins with the poem, "Who killed Cock Robin". It continues with a contemporary version of the children's rhyme. I strongly recommend that you read it; you will not be disappointed.

AFTER THE TRAGEDIES

With the support of Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Mattingly survived these disasters and went on to institute numerous reforms in the beleaguered agency. More caseworkers were hired, and their training improved. Supervision was increased, and supervisors were held responsible for their employees' misconduct. Child welfare advocates, generally critical of public agencies, gave Mattingly good marks on the whole upon his departure.

However, since no one can entirely believe the words of public officials, (look, for example, at the hosannahs which exalted Joel I. Klein upon his departure from the Department of Education to enter the service of Rupert Murdoch) we cannot say for certain what, if any, skeletons remain in the closet at ACS.

We commend Commissioner Mattingly for his service and dedication over seven long and arduous years. Mayor Bloomberg was courageous for not yielding to those demanding Mattingly's immediate dismissal after the tragedies.

We have just learned that the mayor has appointed Ronald E. Richter, a Family Court judge, to succeed Mattingly. Richter was formerly a Deputy Commissioner at ACS, in charge of Family Court cases involving child abuse, neglect and custodial rights. He is married to Franklin Cogliano, and they have a 14-month daughter, Maya.

Mayor Bloomberg said that the Commissioner's sexual preference had no relevance to his appointment.

Jaybird Flies

Jay Walder Is Not Casey Jones,

Jumps From NYC to Hong Kong

Because MTA Nears Fiscal Crash

Jay Walder is no Casey Jones.

Unlike the iconic railroad engineer, who kept his hand on the throttle while his train plunged down curving tracks to disaster, and by doing so saved the lives of many people, the MTA chief Jay Walder did not even complete two years at the helm of the transit authority before he jumped ship for a more secure and lucrative berth in a private, profitable transit system.

Walder was not shanghaied in the dead of night; he is going voluntarily to MTR (Mass Transit Railway), a railroad colossus headquartered in Hong Kong. Any idea where they might bank?

Actually, Walder had a number of good reasons for his secretive flight from New York and the MTA. The first is the impoverishment of the system he is leaving. The MTA has consistently been undersupported, not given enough money to operate, let alone to build and maintain the system in good repair. Before he came, they overspent wildly, in part because of bureaucracy, over-engineering, and weakness before unions, as well as traditional corruption, particularly in construction and real property. Walder did not want his reputation endangered by too many years presiding over a system subject to those perils.

Second is the apparent indifference of Governor Cuomo to the plight of the MTA, and the absence of any effort to develop a relationship with Walder. It was not nearly as bad as Governor Paterson, who refused to speak with Lee Sander, Walder's predecessor, or even to return his calls, because Sander had been appointed by his predecessor, Governor Spitzer. Sander did not have the luxury of another job offer as Walder did, so he hung around until he was dismissed by Paterson on May 7, 1999 on practically one day's notice, even though it took more than two months after that to find a successor (Walder).

Sander was not the only Paterson commissioner to be fired practically instantly. On October 21, 2010, just twelve days before the election of Governor Cuomo, the Environmental Protection Commissioner, Pete Grannis, who had served since the start of the Spitzer administration and before that, spent 32 years in the Assembly, was told to clear out immediately by Larry Schwartz, at the time a key aide to Governor Paterson. The trumped-up charge against Grannis was that he had sought to avoid budget cuts for his agency, which every commissioner worth anything does every year. Grannis was told that Paterson would not speak to him about the matter and that his dismissal was final. He got the news as he was preparing to deliver a speech and receive an award from an environmental group at what became his last supper in office.

The question arose as to why Grannis was fired just then. Why not leave it to the incoming governor (Cuomo) to choose his cabinet? Why should Grannis' 36 years of state service end in peremptory dismissal? One plausible explanation is based on where Larry Schwartz is now. Governor Cuomo has appointed him Secretary to the Governor, which is the equivalent to chief of staff on the national level and the same post Schwartz held in the Paterson administration.

It is likely that, in firing Grannis on the spot, Schwartz was serving his new master, Cuomo, and sparing the governor-elect the embarrassment of firing an environmental icon. Cuomo has the right to choose his own commissioners, and Joe Martens is a good choice for the position, with a fine environmental record. Nonetheless, we recount the story now to tell you how it was done, which is in accord with the important Rule 26, "No prints."

Walder chose to accept what could be the best transit job in the world, at a multiple of the salary which was begrudged to him in New York. He thus avoided the fate of his predecessor Sander and his colleague Grannis.

Last night, I watched The Call on New York 1. People called and emailed the station to express their views on Walder. Almost all were very negative, with the exception of Richard Ravitch, the former lieutenant governor, as well as MTA chair. Ravitch was highly complimentary, as was Mayor Bloomberg. The hostile attitude of the public came because of the service and personnel reductions that Walder was obliged to make because of the lack of public funds and steadily rising expenses, most but not all of which were uncontrollable. How many years should one devote to serving people who think you are doing a lousy job, when in fact you are doing a very competent job at an obviously thankless task?

One could tell that many of the disgruntled callers were transit employees or union activists. Even so, there were precious few callers who admired the service they received from the MTA or its departing chairman. If there were an attempt to jam the switchboard, it succeeded. If there were not, the negative sentiment was more authentic. Of course, no one likes waiting for a train on a hot platform, being squeezed or crushed inside a car, or being delayed for an indefinite period, whether by "the dispatcher" or by "train traffic ahead".

The underlying fact is that the transit system is in a financial bind comparable to that which faces the United States, except that it cannot run up fourteen trillion dollars in deficits and then ask for more. Sooner or later, probably sooner, fares will rise and interest on the MTA's indebtedness will increase. The State and City, traditional sources of additional funding, are, as we know, undergoing severe fiscal problems and highly unlikely to substantially increase transit subsidies, if indeed they are willing to retain them. One cannot mention state aid without recalling with sorrow the disgraceful decision of the New York State Assembly to eliminate the commuter tax on May 17, 1999, a date which will live in infamy in mass transit history. How long should Walder remain at the helm of a ship which takes on more water each year?

We believe that Jay Walder is, by and large, a decent, honorable, hard-working and competent bureaucrat, who will be missed after he is gone. He is not an inspirational figure, nor did he attempt to be one. Nicole Gelinas, giving Walder a mixed review, asks today in The Post: "Can the next MTA chief be a fighter?" One answer to that question is that the MTA chief is an appointed, rather than an elected official. Major funding decisions are made by the elected, and it is the job of the appointed to do the best they can with the resources that they have been given.

Of course, they can and should demand more; that is what Commissioner Pete Grannis (who was from 1974 to 2005 an elected official, given to expressing his own opinions) did in October 2010, for which he was summarily politically beheaded in what appears to be a pre-election housecleaning. Fortunately, Grannis has found a new job in what appears to be a more congenial setting, so his public service can continue and his pension clock keep running.

"Speak truth to power" is a noble slogan, but truth is better spoken by those with no power than by those with some. People with intermediate degrees of power are likely to lose what little they have if they engage in unappreciated candor. Those outside the Beltway (or its local equivalent) are less subject to the whims of the authorities.

We wish Walder the best in his new adventure, which we hope will be excellent, for the sake of the millions of Chinese and others who will benefit from his services. The search for a successor should begin at once. It will be a real challenge to the Governor and the MTA to find someone as knowledgeable and professionally skilled as Walder. But once such a person is hired, s/he must be given the appropriation that is needed for the MTA to do the job right.

P.S. It is ironic that people now go from New York to Hong Kong in order to triple their wages.

Annus Horribilis

Bloomberg Beleaguered

By Medley of Mishaps.

Third Term Troubles?

The flood of personal criticism leveled at Mayor Bloomberg because of the city's poor response to the December 26 blizzard is somewhat over the top.

Many factors contributed to the city's failure to clean the streets, and there is likely to be at least one investigation to explore the sequence of events and offer proposals to prevent or mitigate a recurrence. Actually, the last two major snowfalls had been well handled, which led to the public's expectation that this storm would be dealt with promptly and professionally. That turned out not to be the case.

Of course, the Mayor had the responsibility of command. You take credit for the good things that happen on your watch, and get blamed for the bad things that happen. People know at some level that the chief executive does not usually make immediate decisions which affect the outcome of these crises, but, nonetheless, success or failure are attributed to the king, chieftain, or the leader of the tribe.

The Mayor attracted criticism because of his initial attitude toward the storm, treating it as a nuisance rather than as a serious blow to others, whose homes could not be reached by ambulances or were unable to get to work. As of today, we have not had reports of fatal heart attacks caused by people shoveling the snow that blocks their automobiles that are parked in the street. That is fortunate, but the situation is still risky.

As the crisis continued, the Mayor changed his stance and took the situation much more seriously. He did not repeat his suggestion that they attend a Broadway theater, which had a Marie Antoinette quality when addressed to people trapped in their homes by snowdrifts, or unable to travel owing to blocked streets or subway and elevated lines which were not running.

Actually, the MTA response to the storm appears to have been far worse than the Department of Sanitation’s, judging from the length of time that lines were out of service, but chief Jay Walder maintained a low profile. We have not previously associated the unpopular MTA with failure to respond to snowstorms which blocked the tracks, but they sure messed up this time.

The MTA’s low point came when they held a trainload of passengers during a very chilly night at Howard Beach, the station closest to JFK airport. When one thinks about it, the failure to retrieve their own passengers from a frozen stalled train for seven hours is a remarkable example of incompetence, and the investigations that will follow should not ignore that episode. We assume that the passengers who had cell phones used them, otherwise the situation would have been far worse as citizens searched for relatives missing in the tundra.

With all the city’s faults, we believe that the concentration of blame on Mayor Bloomberg is unjustified in this instance. It seems to us as if the media and the people finally have found a plausible reason to express their dissatisfaction at a number of unpopular decisions made by the Mayor over the last few years.

First, and most important, was the 2008 reversal of his long-held public position on his own tenure, when he decided to seek re-election by using his puppets on the City Council to rush through a law extending eligibility from two to three terms. The public, when polled, objected to this change by a margin of 89 per cent to 7 per cent. The unfairness of changing the rules in the middle of a conflict was widely perceived; it basically runs up against people’s ideas of fair play.

What the Mayor did, however, was clever and wise. He personally sought, and received the support of, his fellow billionaires who owned newspapers. His alliance with Rupert Murdoch of the Post, Mort Zuckerman of the News, and Arthur Sulzberger of the Times (who may no longer be a billionaire) secured the success of his scheme.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with seeking support from one’s peers, especially when one has so few peers. The reporters hated the switch to three terms, and expressed that view in their columns and articles to the extent that they could, but the owners control the editorial pages, and they lose enough money on their papers that they have all paid for the privilege of expressing their opinions. It is also an underlying fact that Mayor Bloomberg has so far been a generally good mayor, and, having seen seven relatively closely and three at a distance, I know that some were much better than others, and some were far worse.

A number of other matters have chewed at the Mayor’s reputation. The repeated indications of pre-Presidential activities, travels and speeches and the formation of nation-wide organizations and coalitions for various good causes, coupled with the same denials Bloomberg made repeatedly when he was asked whether he would run for a third term, tug a bit at the credibility of the non-candidate. Of course he is not running today, but if circumstances a year or two from now warrant a change of heart, there is no reason why he should not run.

It was once seen as possible that he would be a more moderate and effective President than either Mr. Obama or Ms. Palin, assuming they were to be the major parties’ nominees. Recent events have taken the bloom off that rose, just as Mayor Giuliani’s support for Bernie Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security doomed his hopes in 2012, although it was not immediately realized that that was the case.

The Kerik situation illustrated one of the parables of politics: how many years of relatively good work can be canceled out by a single error in judgment. The public can be forgiving, but it usually takes time for outrage to dissipate, and in this country, unlike England, elections come on a fixed schedule.

On November 9, Mayor Bloomberg suddenly announced the appointment of Cathie Black, recently kicked upstairs to be chair of Hearst magazines, as Schools Chancellor, and Joel Klein was tossed to Rupert Murdoch to do something or other. Ms. Black had absolutely no experience in education, but is an engaging and attractive member of the mayor’s circle of acquaintances. She required a waiver of State legal requirements, which was obligingly granted by the State Education Commissioner, a decision so far upheld in court.

The justification for approval here is that the Education Mayor is responsible for the school system, and should be allowed to appoint his own choice as long as she can read and write.

Basically, no one who was not in on the plot takes Ms. Black seriously. What can she contribute to a professional field so difficult to manage that experts are sharply divided and statistics are notoriously suspect? The Black episode took its toll on the Mayor’s earned reputation for excellent, well-vetted appointments.

Then, on December 12, the Mayor’s confessed on NBC’s Meet the Press that “I want to go out being, having a reputation as a very good, maybe the greatest mayor ever.” Although the context of the statement may have been a denial of Presidential ambitions, the words were criticized as overly self-referential.

As luck would have it, on December 15, the first (and hopefully the last) major scandal of the administration broke, with $80 million reported stolen and uncounted millions wasted in a computer fraud. Juan Gonzalez of the News had written a year of stories about City Time, naming the bad guy who ran the agency (Bondy) while completely under the thumb of a his buddy (Mazer), a worse guy who, with the aid of his relatives, stole all he could gets his hands on, which came to eight or nine figures.

The case became public when six people were indicted by the United States Attorney for the Southern District (an office previously held by Mayor Giuliani), who worked with the NYC Department of Investigation. This was the largest depredation of public funds in a century, comparable to Boss Tweed’s profits from the construction of the New York County Courthouse in the 1860’s and 1870’s.

Although the Mayor was obviously unaware of the thievery going on, and expressed “zero tolerance” for such behavior, the question at once arises as to who, under him, was in charge of the CityTime project. There must be a chain of command and responsibility here. Who oversaw the thoroughly corrupt Office of Payroll Management?

Note that former Comptroller William Thompson shared control of this agency with the Mayor, and reported nothing. The new Comptroller, John Liu, sounded the alarm in 2010, but the horse was long gone from the stable. The series of frauds, which continued for six years, was not helpful to the Mayor’s reputation as a professional manager with particular expertise in computers.

The timing of this descending series of incidents created an unfortunate karma before the December 26 blizzard. The latest report, posted on the Daily News website today, is about Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s tweet at 11:06 p.m. Sunday night: “Good snow work by Sanitation.” Needless to say, and fair or unfair, this tweet will be remembered as the local equivalent of former President Bush’s memorable words on September 2, 2005: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

The good news is that all this is happening toward the end of 2010, which may be comparable to the year 1992, which Queen Elizabeth II described in a speech to Guildhall on November 24, as an “annus horribilis”. For a list of the misfortunes that Her Majesty endured eighteen years ago, click here. You see, it can happen to anyone.

We hope that the curse of the third term worked itself out this year, and that the remaining three years will be happy and peaceful ones for the city and for its Mayor. The problem is that substantial budget cuts lie ahead, which will lead to reduced services and increased unemployment.

These are hard times for anyone who governs. Mayor Bloomberg knew that. In fact, he said on October 2, 2008 at the press conference announcing his intention to seek a third term that “handling this financial crisis while strengthening the essential services such as education and public safety is a challenge I want to take on for the people of New York.” He has that responsibility and that obligation.

As the year 2010 comes to a merciful end, we hope that 2011 will be as good as it can be under the circumstances. Rough times lie ahead for all governments, but out of the three sovereignties: federal, state and local, it is the City of New York that has been most financially responsible for the last decade.

We have a decent, honorable and intelligent mayor. His personality appeals to some, and not to others.

A problem he will face in his tenth year in office is that after a while the people get tired of you. It happened to LaGuardia, Wagner and Koch, all now highly regarded mayors.

The Mayor should try to do as much good as he can in a climate of reduced sustenance for the city and lowering clouds for himself. We particularly recommend that he follow Rule 19: "Be kind to man and beast."

We wish all of you good health and good will in the new year.

MTA Minions Face Axe

BREAKING NEWS: Just as we are about to publish, Crain's New York informs us that the MTA's budget deficit is $105 million greater than the agency had previously estimated. Real estate tax revenues based on property transfers were far short of expectations for the first six months of 2010. This will further stress the financially beleaguered agency, which this Sunday will impose substantial service reductions.

MTA Running On Fumes

More Cuts Are Predicted

What About Big Earners?

Fares to Rise in January

The service cuts on bus and subway lines that will take effect Sunday morning have received less attention than they deserve. Apart from the usual suspects, transit buffs, local elected officials and neighborhood activists, there was no popular uprising in protest of the substantial reductions in bus routes. Nor did the mainstream media focus on what was being lost in the five boroughs.

The MTA is complying with fiscal realities in trying to balance its budget by the end of its fiscal year, June 30. To plug its $761 million shortfall - $378 million of which the MTA claims to have been made aware of only in February when it received revised State aid projections - the MTA has devised a multi-pronged, cost-cutting approach that calls for the elimination of 141 of 280 projects in the 2010 operating budget, renegotiating vendor and supply contracts, improving inventory management, and, of course, staff and service reductions.

The MTA told us that the authority would be reducing the size of its administrative staff by 15% - in terms of payroll, not necessarily people, across the MTA's constituent agencies - and 20% at MTA headquarters. All in all, the agency is expecting to lay off, buy out, or allow to leave by attrition around 3,000 employees, out of about 70,000 total. This total includes the nearly 500 station agents whose layoffs are currently pending due to a court order, 270 bus drivers whose positions will be eliminated by the service cuts, and 600 administrative and clerical workers.

How much the cuts will impact the MTA's leadership at 347 Madison Avenue, 2 Broadway and 130 Livingston Street - the hydra-headed agency’s triple set of headquarters buildings - is difficult to gauge. For most of us, it is a question of trust in the MTA's new executive director and chairman, Jay Walder, who was nominated by Governor Paterson on July 14, 2009 and confirmed by the State Senate eight weeks later.

On the surface, Walder appears highly qualified. Clearly not a political appointee, he is a mature professional who most recently was a partner in the consulting firm of McKinsey & Co. He began his career at the MTA in 1983, heading its capital program budget office before becoming the agency's chief of staff and ultimately executive director and chief financial officer. From 2001 to 2007 Walder was managing director for finance and planning at Transport for London (their MTA). He is credited with leading the development of the transportation plans for London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympics, and introducing the Oyster card, their electronic ticket for public transportation.

ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL

From the worm's eye view of New York Civic, we have lost our bus route on Park Avenue South. The M1 has been cut back so that it goes south on Fifth Avenue and north on Madison. How much money will be saved by rerouting a handful of buses each hour from Park to Fifth is not clear. It is likely that the number of buses on existing routes will also be reduced, because savings come from cutting the number of buses, more than by changing a route to a parallel avenue two blocks east.

It is true that there is a 6 train underneath Park Avenue South (Fourth Avenue until 1950), making local stops at 33rd, 28th and 23rd Streets. The stairs from the platform to the street range from twenty (32nd northbound) to 40 (33rd southbound). There are no elevators at these stations. The buses about to disappear are handicapped-accessible. Bus riders headed north will have to walk west to Madison Avenue, those going south can walk east to Lexington Avenue.

We do not maintain that this reduction is the most onerous of all those being imposed. In fact, we heartily approve the elimination of certain express routes in Manhattan, where we have never seen more than a handful of people on board. We understand the MTA's tactic that, if one must make reductions, let them all take effect immediately to minimize the length of time that the issue will be open for discussion, and limit the controversy that could arise.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

DIGRESSION: Immediate action also results from the use of the guillotine, an instrument devised by a French physician and professor of anatomy at the faculty of medicine in Paris, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814). He designed the machine as a humanitarian device to protect the condemned from pain resulting from protracted swipes by a clumsy axeman, or one using a dull blade.

We read in Wikipedia that in 1784, when Dr. Franz Mesmer (who, like Dr. Guillotin, Nicolas Chauvin, Jean Martinet, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the Marquis de Sade, lives on in a word) publicized his theory of animal magnetism, Louis XVI, later to be a subject of Dr. Guillotin's machine, appointed a commission to investigate the theory, which some considered offensive. Dr. G was appointed a member of the royal commission, along with one Benjamin Franklin, who was Ambassador to France at the time. Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, was also a member of the commission, but that did not save him from the guillotine in 1794, during the Reign of Terror.

You can click here to learn more about the commission, its findings, and the history of the dealings of Lavoisier and the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat, who had been dismissed by Lavoisier as a young scientist and blocked by the great chemist from becoming a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

The slight understandably earned Marat’s ire, and years later when Lavoisier was denounced as a public enemy for serving as a tax collector for the deposed king, Marat fanned the flames of public outrage by accusing Lavoisier of diluting commercial tobacco and cutting off Paris’s air supply by building a defensive wall around the city.

The additional charges assured Lavoisier's eventual beheading, although Marat did not get to enjoy the spectacle, having already been assassinated, stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday in July 1793.

The execution of Lavoisier has a tragic counterpart in the United States: the 1804 killing of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton by Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel. One case was state action and the other was a private slaying, but both were outrageous. Burr’s side of the story is told by Gore Vidal in "Burr".

BILLIONS WASTED, NO PENALTIES

RETURNING to the MTA, we have over the years been highly critical of their capital program, which has been extravagant and wasteful. The Fulton Street Transit Center has consumed over a billion dollars and is far from complete. It does not add significant new service, but generally reconnects the platforms and prettifies the tunnels at enormous expense. The spur to Eleventh Avenue and 34th Street, constructed solely at City expense, lacks a station at Tenth Avenue and 42nd Street, which would serve many more riders and accommodate the new residences in Midtown West.

We will go no further here into the mismanagement of the MTA over the years, its inability to deal with its unions and its overstaffing in some areas. These shortcomings are not yet the fault of the current management. Lee Sander tried to clean up the mess as best he could, but he got no help from the unions or from Governor Paterson, who refused even to speak to him.

If you look in the Starchives, you will find numerous articles on the MTA we have written in the past seven years. Now the agency is strained by a financial crisis over which it has little control. Its overreaching problem is its deficit, caused in part by a militant and aggressive union, timid political management, and improvident allocation of resources.

The MTA is blamed for events that are beyond its control, and escapes responsibility for matters it has mishandled. Governors and mayors, through their apathy and inaction, have contributed to the continuing transit crisis. Basic responsibility, however, lies with the offices and board of the authority, some of whom are empty suits.

Chairman Walder will be judged in large part on how he deals with a crisis he did not create. He demanded and received his own golden parachute if he is forced to leave the job early. At this point we hope he stays with it.