Lulu lunacy

Talking Point

MTA’s annual budget crisis arrives

Ah, the rituals of November!

There’s the civic pride of Election Day, the familial warmth and heady smells of Thanksgiving, the long lines of Black Friday . . . and the dire warning from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that it is headed for an annual deficit of $1 billion four years in the future. It’s seemingly the same every year, yet every year the MTA manages to freshen its projection so riders can be fully alarmed once more.

The MTA announced Thursday that even if it does institute a planned biannual 4 percent fare hike in March, which critics are fighting hard to stop, the authority will face a $1 billion annual operating deficit by 2022.

Last year, in mid-November, the headlines, like CBS New York’s “Official Warns MTA Budget Deficit Could Surpass $1 Billion In 2021,” screamed the MTA warning that a $1 billion annual deficit would appear by 2021 even with planned fare increases, if savings goals were not met.

In 2016, when the planned 2017 fare hike that did go into place was, like the 2019 hike being debated now, still just projected, the MTA warned the $1 billion deficit could appear by 2020.

The last time the message was any different was 2015 when higher revenue from real estate taxes, increased ridership, and high toll collection amounted to a $1 billion surplus.

But those good times quickly melted away. Subway ridership fell 2 percent by 2017, and is on track to fall an additional 2 percent this year as unreliable service and ride-hail services shifted behavior.

So the MTA annual deficit cry is on its way to becoming a predictable November tradition, and transit-snarling snowstorms. But will the annual budget hand-wringing surpass in recognition the MTA’s twice-a-decade “There is no way we can pay for our next five-year capital plan!” ritual?

Only time will tell.

Lane Filler

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Daily Point

Overcompensation

With the New York State Compensation Committee facing a Dec. 10 deadline to come up with a recommendation on a legislative pay raise, there has been a lot of focus on the base pay legislators make: $79,500 a year. That’s the third-highest in the nation, behind California ($107,240) and Pennsylvania ($87,180).

But if you look at it as per-month pay, New York’s legislators, working five months annually, actually make the most in the country. California’s pols work nine months, and Pennsylvania’s work six.

And, most of New York’s make more than the $79,500, thanks to a little thing called “lulus,” short for payment in lieu of salary.

Lulus are stipends paid to the super-special important New York legislators who do more work than the peon lawmakers. So how many are super special and how many are just average elected officials? Of the 213 members in the State Senate and Assembly, 160, or a whopping 75 percent, receive extra pay. You get a lulu and you get a lulu and . . .

In California only four do, out of 120. In Pennsylvania, 15 made the cut, out of 253.

So what kind of money are we talking about? The current leaders, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, receive $41,500 stipends to run their chambers, for a total of $121,000. Their minority counterparts, Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who will soon be taking the gavel in the Senate, and Assemb. Brian Kolb, receive $34,500 each to have almost no say in how their chambers are run.

Then there are the other leadership members who get sliding amounts, like Ken Lavalle’s $25,000 as chairman of the Senate Majority Conference and Michael Gianaris’ $20,500 to be the Senate’s deputy minority leader. Seemingly everybody has a title (although it’s really only 75 percent.)

Assemb. Edward Ra, for instance, picks up an extra $18,000 a year for being assistant minority leader pro tempore of the Assembly. Assemb. Michael Montesano makes $14,000 as chairman of the Assembly Minority Program Committee.

The smallest stipends are $9,000 each, for ranking minority members on committees. Sen. John Brooks, for instance, though he’s new to the senator game, is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agricultural Committee (you know how many vegetable gardens there are in Seaford), while Assemb. John Mikulin, also a rookie, is nonetheless the ranking minority member on the Consumer Affairs and Protection Committee.

So with all this merit pay being tossed around, how much does the average New York legislator make, before outside income, of course?

Just a hair under $92,000 a year. For five months. Plus $172 for each day spent in Albany, and pretty comfortable pensions, and retiree health benefits after 10 years (winning five elections) on the job.

The newly created compensation committee is a no-fingerprints way for lawmakers to give themselves a raise — they haven’t had one in 20 years — without actually having to vote on it themselves. It’s like asking your mother-in-law to call your boss.

But at least three of the four members who will decide have a pretty good sense of how the convoluted pay system works, and maybe even some fond memories that will lead to strong opinions. New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer both served in the Assembly, and SUNY chair Carl McCall was a state senator. Only CUNY chair Bill Thompson never served in the legislature. But whether lulus, per diem and travel expenses continue is a big part of that calculation. And right now lawmakers are allowed to earn unlimited outside income for all the days they are not working as legislators . . . and perhaps the ones that they are.

Lane Filler

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Pencil Point

Real-life superheroes

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Reference Point

Considering LI traffic

If you had to do it all over again . . .

That’s the feeling you keep getting when you stroll through the archives of Newsday’s editorial board. Consider this gem:

On Nov. 15, 1946, the board wrote about a $131.9 million traffic program offered by then-New York City Mayor William O’Dwyer that gave the board “hope of some day being able to drive to, through, or about his city with comparative ease.”

The plan included garages, elevated highways, bus terminals, expressways and “subsurface walks.”

We know how that worked out.

But the real head-shaker came with the board’s insistence that Long Island should take note of O’Dwyer’s forward thinking and do some planning of its own. The board noted that traffic problems on Long Island were “less acute” than in the city but it predicted that Long Island would grow faster than the city in the next 10 years. That expectation warranted “the same visionary planning for the future,” the board wrote.

As for the areas to be addressed, the board wrote, “The parkway system is a good beginning. Improvement of Hempstead Turnpike and other spot planning will help. The ideal of traffic flowing constantly in all directions, with plenty of parking in all our villages, calls for a more imaginary plan than any proposed here yet.”

Drivers on our parkways, Hempstead Turnpike and many other roads, and those who have tried to park in Huntington, Patchogue, Babylon or other downtowns, know that the plan the board yearned for was imaginary.

And 72 years later, we’re still waiting.

Michael Dobie