Former Gov. David Paterson on why he'll be good for the MTA board

Earlier this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo nominated former Gov. David Paterson to join the MTA's board. Paterson spoke with amNewYork Wednesday about what makes him good for the job and how he plans to make ensure the cash-strapped transit agency exhibits "financial discipline."

Often the board gets frustrated with the executive branch, and at least I think I can explain to other board members what the executive branch's challenges are. And I've been one who hasn't been afraid to stick their nose in to be critical as I was in 2003 when then-Senator, now Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and I went after the board about the two sets of books.

I think they did, I don't think they do now… I think after they got around that problem, they recognized that if that went on anymore there'd be further scrutiny.

I'd like to see the MTA get more resources, but I used to hear people say that when I was governor and I knew that we had exhausted the resources we had, which is why I begrudgingly accepted the payroll tax

I thought [the commuter tax] made sense when it was put in in 1956, but once it was repealed, I think it's politically unfeasible. Connecting the outer boroughs is a brilliant idea in my view down the line. If the money's there, it could happen. But, you know, that's, again, a financial consideration.

We would hope that we would get to a point where that won't happen. What we have to understand is if we were starting out with a level playing field, I think these days that with this Governor and with this new chair [Joseph Lhota]… we could set up a structure where you did not see frequent fare hikes. But we're not operating from a level playing field right now, we're operating from a deep debt — and that's the problem. We're paying for the sins of predecessors.

Nobody wants a fare hike, nobody wants diminished services, but the spending in the past was unsustainable. And the MTA, back in the early part of the millennium, was overspending to a point that it ran up a debt that was greater than 47 states. I don't blame people for complaining, but they got used to services that were costing way, way beyond the capacity to fund these services.

No — I think that in order to try to keep us from going down the wrong road, that I made the MTA's job a lot more difficult at times.

I've been a prolific subway rider who hasn't really been riding the subway much since 2006 when I first ran for lieutenant governor. I have been on the Metro-North, and I'm from Long Island … I ride the Long Island Rail Road a lot, even now.