This past Wednesday, the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority (NIFA), a state watchdog with a mandate to monitor and oversee Nassau County’s finances, voted unanimously to go one step further and assume control of the county’s finances. But the MTA and county are still locked in a dispute over funding LI Bus that could mean the end of the system. What does state control mean for transit riders?

Under NIFA’s enabling legislation, a county budget deficit of at least 1% allows for a financial takeover. According to NIFA board members, the budget deficit is more than seven times that minimum criteria. The vote, taken after months of negotiations and a downgrade in Nassau County’s credit rating, changes NIFA from an oversight board to a control board and allows it to revamp the county’s budget and cancel or renegotiate the county’s existing labor contracts and debt. The board aims to release its financial plan for the county by February 15.

In earlier reviews of the county budget, NIFA referenced the MTA-Nassau funding dispute by writing that “We consider the potential loss of MTA subsidies to be a risk until a resolution of this matter is announced.” Hopefully NIFA, in its new capacity, will resolve this matter and save LI Bus service for riders.

A good place to start would be a budget memo Tri-State submitted to County Executive Ed Mangano during the annual budget process last fall. The memo outlined possible ways for the county to meet its obligation to fund LI Bus from existing resources within the county budget.  Doing so would have allowed the MTA to continue to run the system. Unfortunately it was rejected out of hand by the county executive, who instead proposed to seek a privatized system with no public contribution.

Mangano’s administration immediately took a combative tone with the board’s takeover decision, and is said to be weighing a lawsuit to prevent the takeover from actually occurring. It remains to be seen how the politics of the action taken by NIFA shake out. What we do know, however, is that LI Bus and its 100,000 riders a day continue to face a countdown clock to the end of bus service.