These New Yorkers were on the anti-Cuomo train early!
Gov. Andrew Cuomo received an e-mail torrent from New Yorkers in the days after his elected subway chief, Andy Byford, resigned from the MTA – many of the missives blaming the notorious, ego-led governor’s leader for the exit of the British people. , The Post has learned.
The governor received about 225 angry emails and letters in the eight days following Byford’s resignation on January 23, 2020, which the head of transit blamed on Cuomo for becoming “intolerable”, according to correspondence obtained through a request for freedom of information.
“I blame him for his myopia, your ego, your need to control and take credit for your progress with our subway system,” Philipos Wander wrote in an email to Cuomo day after Byford’s resignation.
Under Byford’s leadership, the subways reached their highest performance in six years. He also launched the modernization plan of the MTA currently pursued by his successors.
No achievement has been lost to New Yorkers.
“The man accomplished many things in the relatively short time of his New York subway term. Shame on you for interfering! Mary Jane Wilkie told the governor in a letter the day after Byford’s shocking resignation last year.
“It seems that the political environment has become nothing more than a bunch of guys getting around unable to control their testosterone.”
“It’s a shame you can’t share the spotlight,” Malvina Nathanson wrote. “You owe us all an apology.”
Byford blamed Cuomo for his departure from the MTA, which came less than two years after the governor brought him to run the subways in the depths of the 2017 “Summer of Hell.”
Cuomo did the “intolerable” job, Byford said in an interview with WCBS-TV shortly before returning to the UK in March last year.
He accused the governor’s team of going backwards and downsizing after Byford called for an “independent review” of Cuomo’s plan to prevent the L train from coming to a stop.
“I found myself excluded from meetings that were absolutely related to the day-to-day running of New York City Transit,” Byford said at the time. “The governor is the boss, the governor leads the MTA. But at the end of the day, I had to be allowed to run the system. ”
Letters to the governor alternately condemned the third-term Democrat for letting his talented transit chief leave, asking him to persuade Byford to stay – or both.
“You are like an aggressor in the MTA. You kicked Byeford out [sic] who is ideal for the job and has the workforce that can do it behind him … The one who hires talent gets to shine with them. Cancel this. Grovel [if] necessary, ”wrote Barbara Charton.
“I’m a Democratic Democrat voter, but I’ll always be against you in whatever future election you try for, unless you meet Byford and persuade him to stay with the MTA,” Joyce Stickney said in an email. .
“As in the New York tradition of people like Trump and Giuliani, you let go of your credit obsession and show that ‘you’re in charge’ jeopardizes the success of your nominee,” warned Rick O’Connell.
Cuomo’s leadership style has been in the spotlight again in recent weeks, after he was accused of threatening to “destroy” a member of the state assembly for talking about the state’s decision to withhold data. on thousands of deaths in health care facilities amid the pandemic.
Transit observers said the style was fully displayed with his treatment of Byford.
“Government. Cuomo is unable to recognize the concept of reflected credit, “said David Bragdon of the TransitCenter think tank in Manhattan. “If Andy C. had let Andy B. run NYCT, Andy C. would have gotten a lot more credit than he did because he pretended to run it alone.”
“Andy has inspired an unparalleled level of confidence among riders, workers and New Yorkers, which has been due to his independent professionalism, expertise and commitment, and it is not easy to replace, honestly,” said Riders Alliance representative Danny Pearlstein.
“Due to his clashes with the governor, he was essentially demoted to run trains and buses daily, but did not modernize the subway as he had proposed.”
Speaking to WCBS-TV in March last year, Byford suggested that Cuomo, famous for wanting to be the hero in any situation, could have been jealous.
I didn’t look for the name “Train Daddy”, I didn’t look for the advertisement. But the truth is that a good professional in transit is getting better, “he said. “We have held over 100 public events. This brought a certain amount of publicity. If others didn’t like it, well, that wasn’t my intention. ”
Cuomo, in turn, claimed he never told Byford what to do. When asked if Byford had been “undermined”, the governor said: “In any case, he was over-undermined because I took care of his bosses.”
“I did not work with Andy Byford. I worked with [MTA boss] Pat Foye … I worked with his senior students, “the governor’s reporter said in March last year.
Neither the governor’s office nor Byford responded to The Post’s requests for comment.