Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

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> That's pretty hard to infer given the context, since the MTA is controlled by both the city and the state.

Not really - the MTA is a private entity which receives the bulk of its funding from the state, and the state government is (ostensibly) responsible for holding it accountable.

> This is also true of say, Georgia. You can see for example that no one even ran against Buddy Carter in 2016 [1]. Most districts, period, aren't really that competitive.

New York is a special case in the degree to which both parties collude to keep districts non-competitive for general elections, how they ensure that even primary elections are non-competitive[0], and the number of state laws that they have passed in order to shield this power from being checked by voters at any step.

I don't really want to get too into the details here, because it's tangential to the original topic, but it's been discussed on HN before.

[0] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-poli...

> the MTA is a private entity which receives the bulk of its funding from the state

That's not really true. The biggest source of funding for the MTA is fares, followed closely by dedicated taxes (i.e. there would be no reason for the taxes to exist were it not specifically for the MTA). A majority of those taxes are levied specifically on people who live in the MTA's core area (basically counties surrounding and including the city) [1].

The state actually dips into these dedicated taxes to cover other budget shortfalls.

You make it sound as though the state covers for the MTA using the general tax pool, which is such a minor part of the MTA's budget (through subsidies largely) as to be not meaningful.

> the state government is (ostensibly) responsible for holding it accountable.

No, the board is. The governor appoints 6 board members, the city 4, and the other 7 are delegates from various counties throughout the state.

> New York is a special case

Special case according to whom? Georgia rated 3rd-to-last on Ballotpedia's "competitiveness index" for the 2016 election cycle [2]. If your argument is that:

1) New York overtly colludes to remain uncompetitive

2) Georgia doesn't

3) George still manages to hold less competitive elections than New York

then I think a logical conclusion is one of:

1) Georgia legislators collude but less overtly

2) There's less transparency about the collusion in Georgia

3) Collusion clearly isn't as large a factor in uncompetitive elections as other factors

1: http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding

2: https://ballotpedia.org/2016_state_legislative_elections_ana...

Having lived in both states here's my perspective:

NY has long been a NYC/everything else split. As home prices rose and blue collar workers got priced out of LI, it too is lumping in with NYC as a Dem block. Between the two they way outvote in statewide elections.

Upstate is mainly Repub with a few blue areas.

GA was Dem for years until the mid-90's. Even the Dems were fairly conservative (remember Zell Miller's "My party left me" comments) and since taking control of statewide and anything other than ATL and Macon proper they have gerrymandered districts to the point of there is no way the Democrats could take back either of the legislative bodies.

TL;DL NY has been like this a long time. Albany has played the game for centuries. GA is just learning.

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