Hochul, MTA boss itching for more federal cash after Dems blue wave while facing $900M budget hole

They’re itching to railroad the next Congress.Gov.Kathy Hochul and her transit boss are licking their chops at the chance to squeeze more taxpayer dough out of Washington for the money-hungry MTA once Democrats take over Congress next year.Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Janno Lieber has been celebrating since Democrats’ blue wave midterm romp, even as his perpetually cash-strapped agency keeps hiking fares and fees — and stares down a projected $900 million budget hole by 2030.Now he wants Uncle Sam to cover more MTA spending.“It’s time to deal with the fact that New York historically has been radically shortchanged in money from Washington for transit,” Lieber said on NY1 Tuesday.

“We’re 43% of all the nation’s mass transit riders in the country, we get 17% of the money.Time to fix that.”Hochul and Lieber are hopeful more liberal leadership from New Yorkers Sen.

Chuck Schumer and Rep.Hakeem Jeffries — likely to be the next Senate majority leader and House speaker, respectively — will redistribute the nation’s public transit money.“This is a rare moment for transit when we have two leaders, both in the House and the Senate, who grew up riding the subway, who understand transit,” Lieber said.He even dangled a sweetener, suggesting federal cash could replace some of the billions the state and city pour into the flailing transit system.“Now we have the opportunity to replace some of all that effort that’s coming from the state and the city with federal money, which is overdue to New York, and that is a rare opportunity.

We must take advantage of it,” he said.An MTA spokesperson did not address an inquiry from The Post about which state and city contributions could be replaced, or by how much.Though replacing state and city contributions does not necessarily put money back in New Yorkers’ pockets, cautioned Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission.“Those funds would go back...