(The following story by Steve Ritea appeared on the Newsday website on June 19.)
NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board’s vice chairman is all for taking the Long Island Rail Road – but only if it’s a free ride, courtesy of the systemwide passes he and his colleagues receive as perks.
“Why should I ride and inconvenience myself when I can ride in a car?” David S. Mack, Nassau County’s only voting member on the 22-person board, said yesterday when asked during a break in MTA committee meetings if he would use the LIRR if not for the free pass.
Mack, 66, a wealthy real estate investor who lives in Kings Point and was appointed to the MTA board in 1993, said he rides the railroad five to 10 times a year. A regular attendee at MTA board and committee meetings at least twice a month in Manhattan, Mack also is senior vice president of a construction firm based in Fort Lee, N.J.
His comments came a week before the MTA board is expected to decide whether to revise a policy that has allowed all 22 current board members and 37 former members to hold systemwide free passes – for all MTA bridge and tunnel crossings, the subway and both commuter rails – and use them freely.
Mack did not address former board members’ use of the passes.
Mack also said that when he drives across MTA bridges he regularly calls bridge managers to alert them to any problems he perceives while crossing.
“When I see it, I call it in immediately and it’s corrected,” he said.
“We’re invaluable,” he later added, referring to MTA board members.
“If you saw something and called it in, it goes right there,” he said, kicking the lid of a nearby trash can. “When the normal public calls it in, you know what happens with the bureaucracy – they don’t get the response that a board member would get.”
The MTA has encouraged riders to report suspicious activity through its “If you see something, say something” slogan and also solicits feedback through a variety of forums.
In a statement yesterday, the agency did not respond specifically to Mack’s remarks. “Board members play a critical and unique role in overseeing the transit system,” the statement said. “We have also made enormous strides in gathering customer input, via rider report cards, webinars and public workshops, which has already helped shape policy at the MTA.”
Board chairman Dale Hemmerdinger, asked about Mack’s comments, declined to respond specifically.
“I think it would be a tragedy if the board members didn’t use the system whenever possible,” Hemmerdinger said.
Later in the conversation yesterday, Mack seemed to backpedal on his statements, saying: “It has nothing to do with free or not free; we want to encourage [members] to use it, so if they see something, they’ll say something.”
Gene Russianoff, staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, said board members “lead by example” and “if people who run the system get a free pass, it’s a terrible message” to riders.
“It should hit them in the pocketbook the way it hits their customers,” Russianoff said.
Last month, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo wrote a letter to the MTA asking that all free passes given to board members and former members, who hold lifetime passes for all segments of the system, be revoked. Cuomo called it “illegal compensation.”
Board members originally responded with a plan to ask for their own legal opinion on the matter. But a day later, the MTA announced plans to amend its policy, taking lifetime passes away from former members and asking sitting members to only use their passes “in the performance of their official MTA duties.”
Hemmerdinger acknowledged the new policy would be self-policing. A board vote is expected next week.
In a statement, Benjamin Lawsky, special assistant to Cuomo, said: “If the board rejects its own leadership, we are prepared to enforce our position, because no one is above the law.”