City Council Speaker Calls for City Control of the MTA

March 12th, 2019

The City Council Speaker Corey Johnson this week called for city control of the MTA in his state of the city speech. Under this scenario, the MTA would lose roughly $10 billion in state funding, as pointed out by the Governor in a radio interview this week. The most interesting aspect of the Johnson’s speech, however, was his support for reforms to the scaffold law, including transitioning away for strict liability for the contractor and moving to a comparative negligence standard. Johnson argued that construction in New York is overly costly due in part to the scaffold law and its “absolute vicarious liability, with no inquiry into worker contributory negligence.” The Council Speaker is an unlikely ally for contractors in the state and this is perhaps the beginning of some discussion on scaffold law reform, which is sure to face enormous hurdles in the state legislature from labor groups and lawmakers.