The MTA is losing nearly $50 million a year to dubious crash claims, and its top executive wants Albany to do something about it before another dollar walks out the door.
MTA Chairperson and CEO Janno Lieber stood at a Harlem bus depot Friday alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul and state transportation chief Marie Therese Dominguez to push a package of auto insurance reforms the authority says could protect riders, taxpayers, and transit workers from what Lieber called an ongoing legal shakedown.
“These folks try to find a nearby MTA bus to blame even when our bus drivers, who work their tails off and follow the rules, are not at fault,” Lieber said. “We are, after all, the deep pocket.”
He put it more bluntly when describing the lawyers behind many of these claims. They “seem to think the MTA is actually spelled ATM,” he said.
The authority released a new analysis Friday arguing that Hochul’s proposed insurance reform package would shield transit agencies statewide from what officials describe as windfall payouts in crashes where MTA bus operators bear little or no responsibility. Under current state law, if a jury assigns even a sliver of fault to the MTA, the authority can be held liable for the full cost of damages, including when the other driver involved has little or no insurance.
Lieber described one case where an MTA bus was sitting legally in an intersection when another driver ran a stop sign and hit it. The jury still found the MTA 5% responsible. Because the driver who caused the crash carried minimal insurance, the MTA absorbed the bulk of the payout.
“That’s the type of crazy situation that we’re facing,” Lieber said.
Hochul, who has made cutting auto insurance costs a priority in her executive budget proposal, tied the broader problem to a fraud surge she said has driven premiums skyward for ordinary New Yorkers. She cited an 80% spike in fraudulent claims since 2020 and was blunt about who she holds responsible.
“There are criminals out there trying to scam the system and it has to stop,” she said.
For the MTA, the stakes are concrete. The authority says the $50 million it bleeds annually through crash litigation could instead fund service improvements across the bus and subway network. Lieber made no secret of his frustration that riders are effectively subsidizing a broken legal system.
“Taxpayers are the ones left footing that bill,” he said. “That money is coming out of what should be all kinds of good stuff.”
The pitch from the Harlem depot carried obvious political urgency. The state budget deadline falls on April 1, and Hochul’s insurance reform package has hit resistance in Albany. Both the Senate and Assembly released their one-house budget proposals this past week, and neither chamber included the governor’s insurance reforms. Advocacy groups representing crash victims have pushed back against the proposal, arguing it could make it harder for people injured in legitimate accidents to recover damages.
Hochul acknowledged the opposition but expressed confidence the legislature would come around before the budget clock runs out.
“The legislature knows my priorities,” she said. “There is an absolute way to have all of this accomplished together before the end of the budget process, before the deadline.”
Whether that confidence translates into an agreement is an open question. The MTA has plenty of credibility problems of its own with Albany right now, given the turbulence around congestion pricing and capital funding fights that have stretched across multiple budget cycles. Lieber has been a vocal advocate for the authority’s financial health in those fights too, and he knows how to use a backdrop. A Harlem bus depot, with transit workers nearby and a governor at the microphone, is the kind of setting designed to make $50 million feel personal.
For straphangers already watching fares and service cuts get debated in the same breath, the argument that lawyers are quietly siphoning off what could be improvements to the M15 or the B46 is not an abstract one. The budget deadline is two and a half weeks away.
