Watchdog Wants Hochul To Nix Bus Lane Enforcement Freebies for MTA Drivers

Gov. Hochul must veto a bill that would let MTA employees in agency vehicles park in bus lanes with impunity, even letting them skip court dates for any tickets issued, Albany’s top government watchdog said on Tuesday.

Reinvent Albany said in a statement that the bill — S6815/A8292 —  is “bad policy and bad governance” because “it is not the role of the Legislature to manage New York City bus lanes and be involved in the day-to-day operations of MTA buses.”

“The bill allows MTA workers to cite being on the clock and in an agency vehicle to defend themselves from prosecutions for parking violations,” the group added. “While this may superficially seem reasonable — ‘They’re just doing their jobs’ – we believe it increases the risk that MTA workers will illegally use agency vehicles to break the law, as has been seen countless times with congestion pricing and parking placards.”

The bill gives MTA employees “affirmative defense” while operating authorized vehicles in a bus lane parking violation and conducting MTA business while in that bus lane. It was sponsored by state Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-Queens) and Assembly Member Brian Cunningham (D-Brooklyn). The bill sailed through both houses of the state Legislature in June and was delivered to the governor’s desk to await her signature on Monday.

Affirmative defense is a legal concept where a plaintiff can argue that he or she had a legal justification to commit an offense. The bill itself cited that concept to justify letting off any MTA employees from the inconvenience of disputing or paying a fine incurred while on MTA business. But if employees cannot explain why they were parked in a bus lane, they would not be covered by the provisions of the bill.

Cunningham said the whole point of the bill was to avoid employees facing the prospect of missing a day of earnings in order to deal with a fine that may be unjustified. In addition, current law allows the MTA to pass on the fine to employees, despite the offense occurring in one of their vehicles while employees are supposedly maintaining the system. 

“I get the trepidation around double-parked vehicles in general in the city, and get trepidation around cars that are illegally in bus stops and busways and bus lanes,” he said. “But this particular one just kind of is a slap in the face to workers. Imagine that someone would get a ticket in a bus lane for repairing a bus while they’re an MTA worker and [it’s] forwarded to that person personally.”

He added that he was comfortable with targeted reform that made this legislation unnecessary, essentially blocking the MTA from passing tickets to its employees, and is specifically all ears “if somebody in Albany wants to sit with me and my team and come up with a legislative solution to have the MTA appeal tickets.”

This isn’t the only bill that Hochul will consider that would provide leeway for bus lane blockers upset by tickets. Reinvent Albany is also hoping she vetoes an automated ticketing carveout for Co-op City motorists who illegally park at bus stops, as Streetsblog previously reported.

A spokesperson for Gov. Hochul said only that “the governor will review the legislation.”