Hampton Luxury Liner | MTA Taxpayer Abuse

Let me get this straight. He’s running his buses over private roads that he built himself, right?

— John T

A tax revolt…because that’s exactly what the State needs. This guy, and anyone else wanting a “tax revolt”, is a whackjob.

New York State has the wealthiest middle class in the country because our State is unafraid to grow the government so the decent people can have respectable jobs. This guy is just selfish.

Outer Boro Adam

Liberals love taxes. Love em. Cant..get..enough. You know what pays for the roads morons? The 5% of my income the state takes. Dont you wonder why Florida had no state income tax, with the same population of NY, yet manages to be in a better fiscal situation? Hmmm.

Stunned that a union and government run agency sucks ass. How is Amtrak working out? You cant send first class and other mail anyone else in the country that the USPS..its a monopoly in the true sense of the word. Oh, they are $5 billion in the whole. — Matt

“our State is unafraid to grow the government so the decent people can have respectable jobs.”

Since when are the people serving the rest of us supposed to do better than the rest of us–and do a blithering idiot’s job of it? (Try going to any governmental arm’s agency for help and find out what it’s like to be treated with scorn and/or condescension.) Since when are rural politicians supposed to receive $800 a month for meeting an hour twelve times a year? These are not “decent people.” They are entitled Americans who don’t have to compete with low-paid foreign workers, yet expect no dip in their wages or benefits even though we, their employers, are struggling just to stay in our homes. It was their lack of oversight on our behalf, their cuddling with special interests while our interests were ignored, and their personal aggrandizement at the expense of our services that caused or allowed the meltdown of the financial sector. It’s they who are willing to pollute our water for the sake of drilling for gas that will enrich a minority. “Decent people” indeed.

— edwcorey

hampton Luxury Liner? How much does he pay to use city streets as a private bus stop? Mt Schoolman, you7 just opened a can of worms you will wish remained closed. Boycott hampton luxury liner and start investigating this Mr Schoolman, his taxes, his employees everything!

— JoeJoe

** “Do you know how I feel being asked to subsidize that kind of inefficiency and corruption?” **

I feel it every single day that I have to board a late-arriving, vastly overcrowded, filthy subway car. I’m at the point where I never want to leave my apartment on weekends because I’m so burnt out from my weekly exposure to transit.

— Serendipitous

While I don’t necessarily agree with all that Mr. Schoolman is saying and doing, I understand the sentiment. I do believe that tax dollars provide very needed services to the city. However, it is a supreme slap in the face to see every year the cost of the MTA going up and services declining. While we may have the wealthiest middle class, everyone who resides here isn’t a part of that wealthy middle class. I feel betrayed, yes betrayed, by the lack of integrity and business savvy taking place at the MTA. How is it that they are constantly in need of more from a city in which most people aren’t seeing more in their pay check? However, due to the fact that most New Yorkers don’t own cars and parking is limited even if they did, the MTA knows they can do whatever they want. It’s not fair and it’s not decent. They are not good stewards over the tax payer’s dollars. So I agree with Mr. Schoolman that it makes one angry to think about.

— Ruminating

MR John T The roads he and YOU drive on are supported by tax dollars paid by all. Go and check out the various taxes paid just to fund those beat up roads.

— Dave R

Actually companies like Mr. Schoolman’s pay more than their share of building and maintaining public roads in the form of federal state and local fuel taxes.

I retired after 40 years in the bus industry, dealing with public and private sector operators. The level of waste and inefficiency in the public sector is stunning, and because they can just levie ever higher taxes, there is no motivation to operate efficiently.

Schoolman’s bus company (and his competitors) PAY taxes,and offer better service, for less money. A case can be made that they are also safer, because they are often subject to regulations and inspections that the Public Sector is not.

— Dave Millhouser

Let’s get one thing straight. Not one cent of this tax is being used for transportation. It is all being used for past debts run up by Generation Greed, and enriched pensions for ex-MTA employees who lived in the suburbs and, in many cases, have moved to Florida.

Someone please inform William Schoolman, age 69, that I for one objected to the tax on wages. I wanted his generation to pay, by (for a change) taxing retirement income at the same rate as work income, and nailing those who die off or move out over the next decade with a huge exit tax on their homes. Or, alternatively, having the MTA go Chapter 11 and default on its debts and unfunded retiree obligations.

Since he is still working, as younger generations will surely have to be at that age or older, he might not even object.

— Larry Littlefield

I applaud and support Mr. Schoolman. His and our registration fees and fuel taxes pay for the roads upon which he lawfully operates his business. He and we should not pay additional taxes to the monument of corruption and waste that is the MTA. Not to worry, smart people will continue their exodus from NY, and the remaining lucky folks will still find a seat on the subway… to their favorite pizzeria and their guaranteed CSEA jobs.

— PatPend

You go, Mr. Schoolman, Someone needs to challenge these government agencies who think our pockets are a endless source of money. If the MTA was a private company it would much more efficient but because it is a government agency they think being fiscally unaccountable is acceptable and just goes with the territory. Who ever heard of a mechanic making $200,000 per year only the MTA? What’s the point of a budget? They don’t follow it, they don’t live within it, and at the end of the day for those of us that don’t use it is a terrible financial burden.

Glad to see someone has the CHUTZPAH to at least address it.

— Liam O’Connor

The problem with the MTA is they are free from competition. They should be forced to balance their budget by attracting enough ridership income by raising fares and providing better service. Of course if they could figure out how to be more efficient it would help there bottom line.

If MTA fares were reflective of the actual costs of there service, competition would emerge who could work more efficiently and provide cheaper transportation. If it can’t be done for less then we will all be paying a fair fare to the MTA and who could complain about that.

The practice of subsidizing through backdoor taxes has to stop. We waste more and more money moving money around the government and overseeing collection, we need to simplify.

— C Brooklyn

The Regan Revolution of lowering the blue collar private sector wage is now attacking the public sector. The wave to lower salaries is now attacking the last two bastions of union labor, heath care and the city/state employees.
Will the unions be able to turn the tide?

— not you

The environmental damage of roads and their users are vast, and are paid by all of us.

And the congestion costs of roads are paid by the people who really have to drive (and are stuck in traffic), a catagory into which the east end jitney crowd does not fall. As well as through higher merchandise prices.

Finally, only about a third of even the direct road costs come from gas taxes. The rest come out of general revenues. So… this guy is getting plenty of state largesse.

Our taxes go to subsidize an alternate rare in the US: a rail system. Thank heaven they do! Were it to disappear, the horror that would ensue is beyond imagination. So… sure, let’s run the MTA better. Maybe even introduce on-rail competition. But we can start improving the MTA’s economics by Denver-booting this guy’s stupid buses, so he and his riders stop choking us all to death with their pollution and congestion.

— Nicolas

Schoolman may be the next messiah

Unfortunately, our country and our world doesn’t have a revolutionist like Jesus any longer. He stood firmly against everything big government sought to take away from the individual. He insisted on love than hate, giving up one’s accumulated riches than hoarding, turning the other cheek than striking back, and so on.

I predict the 1970s will play out again. Revolt against bracket creep will re-emerge as a top political issue soon after the economy recovers, the Fed’s easy money will spill out as high single-digit inflation and Obama will fulfill his election promise to hike taxes on the “rich.” Upper-middle-class professional households earning $100,000 to $250,000 a year in 2009 dollars will find themselves inflated into higher incomes and then taxed like Swedes: Their income, payroll, state, sales, dividends and capital gains taxes will all go up–and keep going up, up, up because of inflation.

A tax revolt is coming. By 2012 it could dominate the election.. That income will seem even less after inflation, higher taxes and bracket creep have done their nasty work.

Gerald Celente predicts a rebellion will hit the United States with widespread food riots and a tax revolt by the year 2012. Celente, the man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash, said in a recent interview:

“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”

“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”— John G

The Hampton’s President is correct about his supposition: why should he pay to subsidy his competition?

The answer: he shouldn’t.

You and I shouldn’t have to pay Fed Witholding either – becuase the more we pay in to the corrupt system we have the more they will continue to take from us.

— ronnie@ronyoung.com

“Of course, as a taxpayer, hasn’t Mr. Schoolman been subsidizing these railroads for years?”
“Quite to the contrary, as taxpayers, MTA customers have been subsidizing the roads Mr. Schoolman’s busses use for years!

— Gray, Germany

Please correct the statement that Woodbury Commons is in Westchester. It is in Central Valley in Orange County, on the other side of the Hudson River and farther north from Westchester.

— J-Man

Lots of commenters here who criticize the subsidies for the MTA and who think privatization is the solution. Folks, pls show me a single example of a subway system that runs without subsidies, or that is a private enterpise! Just ONE example.

There is none. And that’s because such an infrastructure in a big city is very expensive, while at the same time the average customer doesn’t have the necessary income to pay an unsubisidized fare. And not a single subway system on earth managed to overcome this problem yet. But without those subways, traffic and economy in those cities would collapse.

So, pls accept reality, and stop engaging in wishful thinking.

— Gray, Germany

And here’s the kicker for Mr. Elitist Schoolman and his genre of anti-social thinkers. His one way trips on a Saturday in February from, for instance, Manhattan to East Hampton cost $36. The LIRR? $16.75. Something tells me that his clientele might be able to afford however much the extra 34 cents per $100 might impact Schoolman’s luxury coaches.

Let’s say that his bus drivers earn $100 for a trip that drives 15 people to the Hamptons. That means Schoolman’s out a whopping 34 cents more for that one trip. Let’s say he does 200 round trips (meaning 400 driver trips) per week and each driver gets $100 per run. So, poor persecuted Schoolman would be responsible for a grand total of $134 per week. Puhleeze… pass it on to the rich riders who can easily afford it. They’ve already decided there was a value proposition in spending an extra $19.75 – suddenly they’re going to stop riding because of an extra few pennies? Otherwise, let them take the LIRR.

This is also repulsive on another level. Stinging the MTA for legal costs associated with this frivolity so one man’s millionaire’s bus can keep costs down. How wrong can one person’s thinking get? How did his parents raise this guy?

— Yesterdays Wine

This MTA tax is hurting our business and our community. How do you manage 70,000 employees and the budget attached to this workforce? Even the best and the brightest in the transportation business would (and are) struggling to get this done. It is an impossible task and the MTA must be broken up into smaller, more managable units. Likewise, the suggestion of expanding the MTA from Rockland to the east end of Long Island is insane.

Mr. Schoolman is on the right track to beating this tax.

John Corrado
President
Suffolk Bus Corp.

— John Corrado

Mr. Schoolman is right that Albany and the MTA need to be held accountable. They need to be shown that taxpayers are paying attention to how they spend tax dollars, and they need to be properly incentivized to use those tax dollars in the most efficient and effective way possible for the public’s benefit. I agree that there is a place for public transportation, but as the MTA currently operates, its bloat and inefficiency hurt everyone. It seems clear that the electoral and legislative processes have failed to fix this problem. The MTA’s surprise budget deficits and the growing number of taxes funneled to MTA coffers are evidence of this. This is not how the MTA was intended to operate, nor should it be. This fight is not about Mr. Schoolman’s Hampton Luxury Liner service, it’s about telling the state legislature that taxpayers are not to be taken for granted. I support Mr. Schoolman in his efforts, and if you agree that our public officials should be held to a higher standard, I encourage you to do the same.

— Hank

To Gray:

You asked “Folks, pls show me a single example of a subway system that runs without subsidies, or that is a private enterpise! Just ONE example”

Well, there is the Hong Kong MTR which has operates without state subsidies. Many consider it the most effective system in the world, making 4 million trips in an average weekday.

— Joe Vaini

For the few hundred dollars a year the MTA has stolen from me, an upstate business, they could at least send me an unlimited Metrocard. Taxing someone “because they have the money” is a really bad reason. I pay a lot in bridge tolls, all or most of which goes to the MTA, so my eleven dollars in round trip toll is really two dollars in bridge maint. and nine in subsidy.

I agree with the bus company. While being forced to subsidize the competition is a narrow issue for most of us, the fact that I have no choice but to pay for a train I never use, my employees never use, is really rude.

This comes on top of gas taxes (which are supposed to pay for the roads, thank you), normal payroll taxes, Soc. Sec tax (won’t be seeing that one back-I”m young), various NY business taxes, etc. etc. I’ve paid for the pavement, thank you.

The simple fact is that, compared to most major cities in Europe, the MTA provides poor service. Period. We are seeing European taxes WITHOUT European levels of service.

The MTA is run by an appointed board, making it effectively not recallable or accountable to the general public. It should be bankrupted, and re organized.

I hope this lawsuit causes no end of trouble for the MTA, and no, I don’t care to subsidize someone else’s fare. No one is paying for my gas, or tolls, or any shortfall MY business may have.

— Mark

#32.. you’re not even coming CLOSE to personally paying your share of the burden your car puts on the system of roads, on the environment, disposal and clean up costs of your vehicle, amortized cost of deaths across the auto transportation system, plowing, maintenance, etc. Not even close. Open your eyes. The only subway systems in the world of any import that operate without subsidies are Hong Kong and New Delhi. Draw your own conclusions about the issues of subsidies in China, a communist state, and draw your own conclusions about the state of New Delhi’s system. And, since we’re discussing subsidies, taxes from downstate NY have been subsidizing upstate schools, roads and other projects for a century.

— Yesterdays Wine

Comment 30

One of the best posts on the subject that I have read so far. The MTA has become a voracious black hole whose only remedy would be a municipal bankruptcy and if this fellow Schoolman, regardless of his motivations, can bring that about through the court system (if they rule in favor of his interpretation that the law requires the MTA to be self sufficient) then we are that much closer to truly reorganizing the agency in a meaningful manner.

— Joe Vaini

To 33

Re your comment regarding the lack of taxpayer subsidies for Hong Kong Mass Transit System : “Draw your own conclusions about the issues of subsidies in China, a communist state”.

Hong Kong , a Special Administrative Region of China, has a highly developed capitalist economy, ranked the freest in the world by the Index of Economic Freedom , a series of 10 economic measurements created by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.

— Joe Vaini

Dear Gray:

That’s the point of the suit. In a nut shell fiscal irresponsibility has to stop. Whether it is the MTA or the postal service or the new the new government health care system company being proposed.

Look at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) it lost $3.8 billion in fiscal year 2009. This was despite reducing expenses by $6 billion, eliminating 40,000 jobs, and reducing payments for retiree health benefits by $4 billion.

Executives from any other corporation with this kind of staggering loss would be tarred and feathered, or at least publicly flogged (as many were in the past year). But unfortunately, the public and the media is so used to poor fiscal performance by the USPS that it no longer merits much of a headline. After all, our country’s “Post Office” lost $2.8 billion in 2008 and $5 billion in 2007. So what’s new?

The MTA is the same. We arw so use to poor perofrmance that we accept it and we just can’t afford it any more.

It has to stop and we need to praise, embrace and support those among us that lead the charge.

“A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else”

— John G

What Bill Schoolman is doing is exercising his inalienable right, as an American citizen, to challenge his government and its inefficient practices. Aren’t we all tired of the wastefulness and abuse that the we subsidize for the MTA? These tax dollars are aimed a bailing out a corrupt institution…one that has long outworn its usefulness and original intent. No imposition of further tax will remedy the bloated budgets and useless consumption that have characterized the MTA for decades.

And to those attacking Mr. Schoolman on the grounds of his companies’ use of public roads, keep in mind that trasnportation companies already foot more than their fair share of the bill for public roadways and utilities. Bill is not questioning NYS income tax, sales tax, use tax, etc., simply this latest example of business owners being stifled by a turgid system that bullies taxpayers on the grounds of sustaining an increasingly-unmanageable and swollem government.

It will be interesting to watch this story evlove and play out in the coming months. Here’s hoping that Mr. Schoolman, at the very least, has garnered enough publicity and attention to let our legislators in Albany know that unfair, unjust, and doomed taxes will not be tolerated.

— Matt B

Where is the fiscal responsibility of the MTA? Any business , public or private , should have controls on costs.
They should have checks and balances to maintain operating efficiency. Their telephone costs ,repair yards, contract work are all examples of poor planning and management. It is not like their management team is overworked. All you have to do is ask the rank and file unions who stand to lose jobs due to the cutbacks in service. They will tell you about where the cuts should take place. It would be from the abundant layers of management sitting around waiting to spend additional tax dollars.

— chessvrugby

The Hong Kong MTR is majority owned by the governement. I wouldn’t call this a private enterprise. Most of the investments into new lines come from the government, so this system IS subsidized, like every other subway system in the world. At least since the takeover of another railroad system, the MTR receives subsidies for the opertion in every single yeear, too. And then, a large part of the profits of this “public transport” company actually come fom the real estate division of the company.

So, a shining example of a private enterprise profitably running a public transport system, without subsidies? Not at all.

— Gray, Germany

Finally someone has the gall to step up to a fractured gov’t system that has been abusing their privileges for many a years now. The MTA, and Albany for that matter, have been run by corrupt parties whose only interests are to afford their own luxuries. I applaud Mr. Schoolman for this crusade, and believe that the only people who would be obtuse enough to call him a “whackjob” would be the very individuals who support this mess of a gov’t we call New York State. It will be a tough fight that will hopefully be the turning point for our rights as taxpayers to do away with this abomination of a tax. Mr. Schoolman, you have my support, and my company and I will reach out to you to see how we can help you.

— MIke A

Gray (Posting 39)

I believe the subsidies you refer to consist of 12.7 Billion Hong Kong dollars granted to the MTR for construction of the West Island Line, a capital project. The MTR ( a privatized company whose shares trade on the HK stock exchange) does not receive regular subsidies to fund day to day operations like the MTA.

— Joe Vaini

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