To the editor:

I am responding to the April 5 letter by Nandan Pai of Plattsburgh (“Governor, New York City should pay for the MTA”) regarding statewide revenue supporting New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).

While Mr. Pai described MTA as “the public transport of New York City,” MTA serves “the New York metropolitan area, including all five boroughs of New York City and the suburban counties of Dutchess, Nassau, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/metropolitan_transportation_authority).

“‘The reality is that 70 percent of the income tax that the state collects happens to come from Westchester, Nassau, Suffolk and New York City,” state Budget Director Robert Mujica said in a radio interview. (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/feb/01/robert-mujica/do-downstate-ny-residents-contribute-more-income-t).

Therefore, downstate taxpayers pay the majority of taxes to support grants and services across New York state, including millions of dollars to Plattsburgh and the Adirondack region. See https://www.cityofplattsburgh-ny.gov/department/mayors-office/news/city-seeking-over-45-million-grant-funding-2022-nys-consolidated, https://www.adirondackexplorer.org/stories/adirondack-projects-grants-redc.

Mr. Pai did not complain about those many downstate-funded state grants and services benefiting his region. However, he complained that statewide tax revenue is being used to support MTA, an essential downstate service, asserting that it reflects “general incoherence,” and “they lack a sound understanding of basic economics, or even the basic premise of fairness.”

So, Mr. Pai is comfortable with downstate taxpayers funding many millions of dollars in North Country programs that do not directly benefit them, but he is unwilling to pay a few pennies more on his cable bill to help support MTA?

Then, he discussed how the “inherent wisdom of effective free-market capitalism has been ignored,” concluding that any state-run enterprise is inherently inefficient, ineffective, and a burden rather than a valuable service to taxpayers. He then suggests that large Federal programs like “Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare” suffer from the same inherent flaws.

Pai’s reference to “free-market capitalism” ignores the many, many examples where markets do not represent an efficient means to address common needs (see https://www.econlib.org/library/topics/college/marketfailures.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/market_failure).

Is Pai suggesting that the Long Island Railroad, the Triborough Bridge, MTA New York City Transit, and MTA Bus should all be shut down and replaced by Uber? Should the New York State Department of Corrections also be shut down? SUNY? The New York State Thruway? Beyond that, does he want to shut down Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare?

Nandan Pai should set aside what appears to be an uninformed hostility to government, recognize that many essential services cannot be provided efficiently by the private sector, appreciate that the North Country receives much more in money and services from New York state than it pays in taxes, and be a little more “fair” with respect to his downstate brethren.

David Banks

Rockville, Maryland