In the ten days since Andy Byford announced his resignation as the head of NYC Transit, New Yorkers have received little official explanation for his widely lamented departure. While a steady trickle of revelations in the press has given credence to the long-circulated gossip that Byford was frustrated by Governor Andrew Cuomo's interference, both men have denied those rumors, with varying degrees of believability.
"I've had a fine relationship with Andy," Cuomo assured reporters in the aftermath of the news. Byford's perfunctory resignation letter — submitted on January 23rd and promptly released by the MTA — alludes to his "reduced" role under a new reorganization plan, before going on to praise the governor who hired him two years ago.
The real reason for Byford's departure may be found in his original resignation letter, which he submitted in October, as Politico first reported, before apparently reconsidering.
A new report from Times columnist Jim Dwyer adds some colorful details to the narrative of the MTA ultimately unsuccessful attempts at persuading Byford to stay — including a Fraunces Tavern intervention by Pat Foye and Kathy Wylde, and an evening spent tossing axes once that campaign finally failed. The piece also makes a passing mention of this "scorching" original resignation letter, in which Byford "detailed grievances with his ultimate boss, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, including complaints that micromanaging by the governor and his office was making it impossible for him to do his job."
Sounds like a fascinating and informative read, doesn't it? Resignation letters are also the sort of document that public agencies are required to be release under the state's Freedom of Information Law. But oddly enough, the MTA isn't sharing. The agency has rebuffed multiple FOIL requests sent by Gothamist/WNYC in recent months, explaining that they need "additional time" to locate the letter.
Experts say there's little justification for the MTA's reticence.
“From my understanding this should be easily available and there’d be no difficulty in them producing this immediately," said David Roth, an attorney with Roth & Roth who frequently FOILs the MTA. "They could produce this one piece of paper quite easily.”
Indeed, enough people have seen the resignation letter that its contents have now been described by sources in two separate news stories (Dwyer confirmed to Gothamist that he had not seen the letter directly). According to the source who spoke to Politico for their story, the resignation centered on two main complaints from Byford: "He’s tired of having to help organize gubernatorial-driven conferences about signaling and technology, which distract him from his job of improving subway and bus service, and he’s disinclined to preside over possible service cuts or layoffs."
In a statement, MTA spokesperson Tim Minton cited the high number of requests that the agency fields as justification for the continued withholding of the letter.
“The MTA receives hundreds of Freedom of Information Law requests for information and documents a month," Minton explained. "They are processed and reviewed in accordance with the requirements of the law."
Requests for the Byford resignation letter, the spokesperson added, have been processed "like all other pending FOIL requests, with requestors being regularly updated in accordance with a response timeline dictated by New York statute.”
Their refusal to pass along the resignation letter comes as MTA Chairman Pat Foye has vowed to radically revamp the agency's widely dreaded FOIL process. A detailed report released last year by Reinvent Albany found that the agency's public records system is "antiquated, slow and fragmented," and "lags badly behind comparable agencies."
"Holding the MTA accountable is dependent on being able to access information about how it operates and makes decisions, and currently, the public cannot effectively do so," Rachael Fauss, a senior research analyst with Reinvent Albany and of the co-authors of the report, told Gothamist on Monday.
The good government group is now working with the MTA on some of its stated recommendations. In an interview, Foye recently acknowledged that "some progress has been made but we still have a lot of work do."
