MTA's top spokesman leaves the agency
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's top spokesman is leaving the agency, officials said Wednesday.
Jeremy Soffin, 33, has resigned from his job as press secretary effective March 16, MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota said at a meeting in Manhattan. His successor has not been named.
Soffin joined the MTA in 2007 after working for a spokesman for the Regional Plan Association. He is leaving the transit agency for a job with Manhattan public relations firm BerlinRosen.
"I consider myself very lucky to have worked here," Soffin said Wednesday. "It's an incredibly important institution with really great people."
He said he has striven to make the agency more accessible and transparent to the media. In 2007, his office put out nearly 400 news releases, compared with 18 in 2006.
Soffin instituted a policy of making the MTA's chairman and other agency presidents available for questions from reporters following monthly board meetings.
When the MTA was faced with a nearly $2 billion budget shortfall in 2010, he worked to consolidate six different press offices at the MTA into one, led by him. The effort cut costs by a third.
Lhota, who joined the MTA in November, said that in the three months they worked together, Soffin repeatedly impressed him with "his intelligence, his ability to think strategically and his dedication not only to the mission, but the riders and customers of the MTA."
Out East with Doug Geed: Wine harvests, a fish market, baked treats and poinsettias NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits two wineries and a fish market, and then it's time for holiday cheer, with a visit to a bakery and poinsettia greenhouses.
Out East with Doug Geed: Wine harvests, a fish market, baked treats and poinsettias NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits two wineries and a fish market, and then it's time for holiday cheer, with a visit to a bakery and poinsettia greenhouses.
