Via this year’s state budget, Cuomo and the state Legislature both instituted a new congestion pricing revenue source for the MTA and required it hire a management consultant to help restructure the place. | Office of Gov. Cuomo Upcoming MTA reorganization report looks to some experts like ‘air cover’

Three officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said a recent meeting with the high-priced consultants whose job it is to help overhaul the 74,000-person, $17 billion organization was alarmingly superficial in light of the task at hand.

The sources, who participated in the meeting two weeks ago, said they couldn’t recall consultants from the firm AlixPartners asking any questions of the board members present at the meeting, at least five of whom were in attendance and have accumulated a wealth of expertise on the MTA, the subject of the firm's inquiry.


Two of the sources said the meeting, which included AlixPartners managing director Foster Finley, lasted only 40 minutes.

“I was startled by how superficial it was,” said one board member, who sought anonymity so he could speak freely to POLITICO.

The governor’s requirement that the MTA retain an outside consultant to develop an MTA overhaul plan can be read as a sign of gubernatorial distrust in the MTA. But the seemingly cursory nature of the AlixPartners conversation with board members has also fed the widespread belief that the MTA is paying the firm $4 million to act as cover for whatever politically difficult decisions MTA officials, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, want to make.

“I’m not trying to be cynical about it,” said Rita McGrath, a Columbia Business School professor and expert in corporate strategy. “But a lot of times, when you know you need to make a difficult decision, having a third party say 'that’s the right way to do it' — that’s often much more digestible.”

There’s no question the nature of the overhaul Cuomo and the MTA are contemplating will be controversial in nature. Elements of the plan that have leaked out — including the possibility of removing bus operations from the purview of New York City Transit, and, by extension, its president, Andy Byford — have already sparked consternation in certain quarters. The plan may also call for layoffs and union work-rule reforms.

Cuomo has certainly made no secret of the fact that he wants change of a seismic nature.

“This is not about moving [seats] on the Titanic,” he told reporters Tuesday. “This is about making sure the Titanic floats — that’s what this reorganization plan is supposed to do.”

Via this year’s state budget, Cuomo and the state Legislature both instituted a new congestion pricing revenue source for the MTA and required it hire a management consultant to help restructure the place. And so it did.

In late April the board voted to approve AlixPartners’ now $4.1 million contract. Later this month, the full board will get to see the report, vote on it and appoint a chief transformation officer to enact it. The MTA will then have 90 days to alter the already approved plan after hearing from the public.

However, giving a consultant just three months to devise a reorganization plan for an organization as byzantine as the MTA strikes some board members as inadequate.

“It’s a very big scope in a very short amount of time for a very complex organization,” said Neal Zuckerman, a board member who, as a managing director of Boston Consulting Group, is himself a management consultant.

McGrath called the timeline “monumentally difficult.”

AlixPartners declined comment for this story.

But it sells itself as a consultancy capable of tackling big projects at lightning speed. It has trademarked a product called QuickStrike, which it touts as a “methodology that identifies the issues affecting a company’s performance, reviews the available options, and plans the solution — in a matter of weeks.”

Further, some of the reforms the consultancy is likely to make — like consolidating legal and procurement departments — aren’t all that surprising. They’ve been circulating in the transit advocacy ether for years now.

Management consultants are “helpful for diagnosing evident problems,” said Karan Girotra, a professor at Cornell’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

“The point of a consultant is to put facts in front of people and get them to face the facts and get collective agreement,” he continued. “That’s the more nuanced version of ‘air cover.’”

In a statement, MTA spokesperson Max Young called AlixPartners “a world class management consulting firm that has worked on and helped to solve extraordinarily complex private and public sector problems at an accelerated pace.”

“They began their work from a blank slate and, since beginning of their engagement, they have hit the ground running, meeting with MTA employees at all levels, as well as external experts and advocates," Young continued. "And we are certain the final report will meet their consistently high standards, and will reflect their analyses."