His appointee Veronica Vanterpool — arguably the board’s most outspoken member — is resigning from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. | Getty Images Another de Blasio appointee departs the MTA, further diminishing his sway

Mayor Bill de Blasio is poised to have even less influence over the subway system that underpins the city he governs.

His appointee Veronica Vanterpool — arguably the board’s most outspoken member — is resigning from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.


Her departure this December means the mayor will hold sway over just two of his four allotted votes on the 14-vote board. The vacancies stand to further weaken his hand at the MTA, even as the authority prepares to implement congestion pricing and a historic $51 billion investment plan, and even as the mayor and governor renew their wrangling over transit funding.

“It leaves the city in an unbelievably vulnerable position and just further cements the governor’s dominance,” said John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, a good-government group.

In an interview Monday, Vanterpool disputed the notion that her departure further weakens the mayor’s hand, because the city’s position at the MTA is constitutionally weak. It has fewer board members than the governor and little actual say over how the MTA is governed. But she did openly lament City Hall’s unwillingness to act more forcefully on behalf of city transit riders.

“I feel that we are, as a city, often in a responsive, reactive mode to what is put forth by the governor, what is put forth by even the MTA, what is put forth by the City Council,” she said.

When the mayor appointed Vanterpool, 44, to the MTA board in 2016, she was its youngest member, and its only woman of color. A longtime advocate at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, she would go on to work as a transportation consultant, including for Scott Rechler, the RXR Realty executive who used to sit on the MTA board, too.

Many former and current MTA board members have complained about its Potemkin village qualities. The governor controls the plurality of its votes, appoints its CEO, and routinely intercedes in its affairs. In recent months, he has further tightened his grip, changing state law to allow his budget director to serve as an MTA commissioner, and naming his financial services chief to its ranks, too. Yet in public, the board purports to act as an independent entity and the governor is fond of saying MTA decisions are out of his hands.

“It’s not a real board because we don’t function as a board, in the sense that we don’t elect or hire our chair or CEO ... and there’s really no accountability,” Vanterpool said.

Vanterpool has found her position there “rewarding and frustrating at the same time.” She’s advocated for better paratransit services and critiqued the governor’s move to spend scarce funding on subway station aesthetics, in the midst of the subway crisis. She’s questioned the MTA’s move to hire 500 cops.

MTA chairman and CEO Pat Foye praised Vanterpool in a statement as "an effective advocate for MTA customers across the agency."

One MTA official, who was granted anonymity so he could speak freely, lamented Vanterpool's imminent departure.

She has served as “courageous and independent voice who has regularly spoken up for customers and public transit, not because she is beholden to a particular camp," the official emailed, but "because she understands her role as a fiduciary of the MTA Board.”

Vanterpool, a Bronx native whose gym teacher was Jennifer Lopez’s mom, is leaving New York for Delaware, where she will serve as Chief Innovation Officer for Delaware Transit Corporation. Among other things, she will oversee the corporation’s testing of self-driving buses. Unlike in New York, Delaware has no transportation funding shortfall, she says. Its transportation secretary talks about mobility “as a right.”

It’s not clear whom de Blasio will name to replace Vanterpool. Nor is it a sure thing that the governor and state Senate will act on that nomination in a timely fashion. Last session, the state failed to act on one of de Blasio’s two appointments to the board. The state Senate currently has no plans to reconvene this year.

In her absence, Vanterpool hopes the mayor appoints a board member that’s something like her — a woman who doesn’t get her paycheck from City Hall.

“I think it’s important to have someone that represents the city of New York, but is not bound by considerations of employment,” Vanterpool said.

In a statement, mayoral spokesperson William Baskin-Gerwitz said Vanterpool was a "true champion when it comes to advocating on behalf of millions of riders who rely on public transit every day, and the Mayor thanks her for elevating the discourse on transportation issues during her tenure on the board."

He added the city will be submitting new names to the state for confirmation to the MTA board in January so "the board can have a full contingent as soon as possible.”