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MTA Refuses To Disclose Legal Cost Of Fighting Accessibility Lawsuits
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Mar 17, 2021
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Amy Pearl / Gothamist
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Mar 17, 2021
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The MTA has denied a request from a disability rights group to disclose how much it is spending in taxpayer dollars to fight several lawsuits claiming it discriminates against its disabled customers.
The groups -- which include the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID) -- claim in their lawsuit that the transit agency has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by renovating stations without adding elevators and failing to maintain existing elevators. They also claim an overall lack of subway accessibility is a violation of New York City’s Human Rights laws.
Currently, a little over a quarter of the NYC's 472 subway stations have elevators, slightly more than what the MTA agreed to after settling an accessibility lawsuit in 1994. The agency agreed to make 100 stations accessible by 2020 at the time, a figure it has exceeded.
In June 2020, BCID executive director Joe Rappaport filed a public request asking the MTA for the full amount it has spent for outside counsel. The agency, last month, denied the request on the basis of how it was worded.
“Please be advised that records are not maintained in a manner which permits practical retrieval because the MTA does not categorize or index payments made for legal services in the manner requested,” the MTA wrote in its response.
The agency released a document containing the retainer fees, but the dollar figures were blacked out.
At the MTA’s monthly board meeting on Wednesday, Gothamist asked MTA Chairman Pat Foye if he would release the dollar figure for how much the MTA has spent on lawyers fighting the six accessibility lawsuits. Foye said he would check with the Freedom of Information Law office about getting the numbers. But he wouldn’t commit to releasing them.
“I can’t commit to that because I don’t know what the issues are, but I will talk to the FOIL people,” he said.
The MTA did not return an earlier request from Gothamist for comment about how much it has spent on outside lawyers fighting the six accessibility lawsuits or why it denied the public records request Rappaport filed.
But Rachel Fauss, a senior research analyst with Reinvent Albany, a non-profit that advocates for open government, criticized the agency’s response.
“The public deserves to have access to basic information about government contracts, including those for legal services, because there should be nothing to hide,” Fauss told Gothamist in a statement. “The MTA should proactively disclose basic data about all of its contracts in an open contracts database, as recommended in our Open MTA report.”
Rappaport’s group has also taken issue with the MTA’s decision to hire outside attorneys--rather than in-house lawyers--to fight them. The MTA hired counsel from the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP to represent them in court. The firm did not reply to emails from Gothamist seeking comment.
“While the MTA talks a good game about accessibility, it has chosen to defend itself vigorously with these outside lawyers, who just engage in delaying tactics, and have from the beginning of their involvement,” Rappaport said.
The plaintiffs are not seeking a monetary settlement but rather a written commitment from the MTA that it will make subways accessible on a specific timeline.
When MTA Chairman Pat Foye was appointed to his current position in 2019 he pledged to make the MTA more transparent by revamping the public records request process known as FOIL--the Freedom Of Information Law. He made a similar pledge as Executive Director of the Port Authority. He even won praise from advocates. But, it was short-lived; the FOIL process was never overhauled.
This week is known as “sunshine week” by advocates for open government, a time to bring awareness to closed-door agencies and push them to be more transparent. Reinvent Albany, which once looked forward to Foye’s changes, said it’s disappointed by the lack of action.
While Rappaport does not have the legal fees, he did find through public records that the agency spent $250,334.25 on Weiss's services in 2017, although it’s unclear what cases that covered.
Rappaport filed an appeal at the beginning of March.
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Stephen Nessen
Stephen Nessen covers transportation. Since 2008 he has reported on everything from Occupy Wall Street, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, Hurricane Sandy, to Trump’s campaign for president. His transportation reporting has taken him everywhere from the MTA’s secret Rail Control Center to the gleaming subways of Seoul. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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