Mayor Bloomberg’s MTA Board Appointees
Name	Day Job	Appointed to board
Susan Kupferman	Director, NYC Office of Operations	2002
Mark Page	Director, NYC Office of Management and Budget	2003
Mark Lebow	Partner, law firm of Sokolow, Dunaud, Mercadier & Carreras	2002
Kenneth Caruso	Partner, law firm of Chadbourne & Parke LLP	1995 (Mayor Giuliani)

City could intervene in elevator battle [358 words]

An MTA commissioner appointed by Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that the city’s four MTA board members won’t support the elimination of 22 elevator operators from five Washington Heights stations if the MTA doesn’t prove that the cuts are needed.

“The city’s representatives will not support it [the cuts] unless it’s justified by the MTA,” board member Mark Lebow said.

Lebow would not describe what kind of justification the city is looking for, but added that he had visited Washington Heights recently to see the elevators in operation.

In October, the MTA proposed eliminating about two-thirds of the elevator operator positions at 181st Street and 190th Street on the A line; 168th Street on the A/C and 1/9 lines; and 181st Street and 191st Street on the 1/9 lines. Community residents are protesting the cuts, which they say will make the deep stations more dangerous.

Mayor Bloomberg has only four appointees on the MTA’s 17-member board, but the city representatives often are considered the decision-makers when it comes to transit proposals that affect city residents.

For example, city board members played a key role recently in winning approval of CityTicket, which will lower weekend fares on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North for rides within the city borders. That victory came in the midst of the larger fare hike debate, which the city board members supported.

A vote against the cuts by the four city representatives probably wouldn’t be enough to save the elevator operators, however. Instead, board member Lebow and the other city representatives would have to work behind the scenes beforehand so that the MTA staff would withdraw the proposals before final approval of the budget later this month.

Community residents said they plan to ask for meetings with the city’s MTA board members, including Susan Kupferman, head of the city’s Office of Operations.

“Mayors are supposed to stand up for subway riders,” said Gene Russianoff, staff attorney of the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign. [“This is as basic as it gets. The mayor’s a subway rider, so he knows firsthand that you don’t want to get into an unstaffed elevator that travels 12 stories down,” he added.]

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