A longtime ally of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo will resign from the MTA board, state officials said Thursday.
Larry Schwartz — who served as Cuomo’s top aide after he took office in 2011 — notified Gov. Hochul he plans to leave the board “effective when the Senate confirms his replacement,” said Hochul spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays.
Schwartz is the latest official to resign from New York State government after being named in the bombshell August report from Attorney General Letitia James that detailed Cuomo’s pattern of sexual harassment and was among the factors that led him to resign in disgrace.
Hochul vowed when she took office to remove any staffers implicated in the AG report — but the deal made over Schwartz’s resignation from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board likely allows him to serve into 2022, when the Senate reconvenes.
The governor nominates six of the 14 votes on the MTA board, including its chairman. New York City’s mayor nominates four. Hochul already lost one of her MTA board seats when Cuomo’s Department of Finance superintendent Linda Lacewell resigned in August after she was also implicated in the AG report.
If Schwartz were to resign immediately, Hochul would be left without a plurality of the votes on the board, which oversees the MTA’s finances and fare policies.
Schwartz — who earlier this year was in charge of the state’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout — was accused in the AG’s report of pressuring county executives about their public responses to allegations against Cuomo.
“I’m not calling you about vaccines, I’m calling because you’ve taken a public position calling for an independent investigation by the Attorney General’s office and you’re going to wait for the outcome of that investigation,” Schwartz told county executives, according to the report.
Schwartz, now an executive for the airport concession company OTG, has served on the MTA board since 2015, and is chairman of its finance committee. He regularly bumped heads with city representatives and transit union officials on behalf of Cuomo.
Transport Workers Union international president John Samuelsen — a non-voting MTA board member — said Schwartz’s resignation was “addition by subtraction.”
“It’s an excellent thing to happen to the MTA. It just should have happened a lot faster,” said Samuelsen. “Every moment he’s around is more poison spewing into the MTA… Schwartz oversaw a reign of terror.”
Hochul’s people were more magnanimous about Schwartz’s departure, saying the governor “is grateful for his public service.”
“To ensure that the MTA board is accountable to riders and represents the voices of New Yorkers, our administration will be soliciting input from advocates, impacted communities and experts on candidates to fill the open seats on the board,” said Crampton-Hays.
She added: “We look forward to working with the Legislature to confirm those appointments at the next legislative session and deliver the modernization, reliability, and enhancements New Yorkers deserve.”
