These New Yorkers were on the anti-Cuomo train soon.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo received a torrent of hate messages from New Yorkers in the days after his elected subway chief Andy Byford left the MTA, with many of the missives blaming the governor’s leadership, notoriously driven by the ego, from the departure of the popular British, the Post has learned.
The governor received about 225 emails and angry letters in the eight days following Byford’s resignation on January 23, 2020, prompting the traffic chief to make Cuomo “intolerable,” according to correspondence obtained in through a request for freedom of information.
“I blame his departure for his myopia, his ego, his need to monitor and be credited with the progress made with our tube system,” Philipos Wander wrote in an email to Cuomo the day after leaving Byford.
Under Byford’s leadership, the tube reached its peak performance in six years. He also launched the MTA modernization plan that his successors are currently pursuing.
Neither achievement was lost on the New Yorkers.
“The man has achieved a lot in his relatively short term on the New York subway. Shame on him for interfering!” Mary Jane Wilkie told the governor in a letter dated the day after Byford’s shock resignation last year. .
“It seems like the political environment has become nothing more than a group of guys jogging unable to control testosterone.”
“It’s a shame I can’t share the focus,” 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 took him to run the subways out of the depths of the summer of the hell of 2017.
Cuomo did the job “intolerably,” Byford said in an interview with WCBS-TV shortly before returning to the UK last March.
He accused the governor’s team of going backwards and reducing his role after Byford called for an “independent review” of Cuomo’s plan to prevent the closure of the L train.
“I found myself excluded from meetings that dealt absolutely with the day-to-day running of New York City Transit,” Byford said at the time. “The governor is the head, the governor leads the MTA. But in the end, I needed to leave to run the system. “
Letters sent to the governor alternately punished the third-term Democrat for letting go of his talented traffic chief, and asking him to keep Byford, or both.
“You are taking the harassment at the MTA. You expelled Byeford [sic] who is ideal for the job and has the workforce who can do it behind … Whoever hires talent manages to shine with them. Undo this. Grovel [if] necessary, “wrote Barbara Charton.
“I am always a Democratic voter, but I will always be against you in any future elected position you try, unless you meet with Byford and convince him to stay in the MTA,” Joyce Stickney emailed.
“As in the New York tradition of people like Trump and Giuliani, let go of your obsession with getting credit and show that‘ you’re in charge ’jeopardizes your nominee’s successes,” Rick O’Connell warned.
Cuomo’s leadership style has been back in the spotlight in recent weeks, after he was accused of threatening to “destroy” a state assemblyman for talking about the state’s decision to withhold data on thousands of deaths in nursing homes in the midst of the pandemic.
Traffic watchers said the style was shown with Byford’s treatment.
“Governor Cuomo is unable to recognize the concept of reflected credit,” said David Bragdon of the Manhattan-based think tank TransitCenter. “If Andy C. had let Andy B. run the NYCT, Andy C. would have gotten much more. credit for what he gets for pretending to direct it himself. “
“Andy inspired an unparalleled level of trust among pilots and workers and New Yorkers, and that was thanks to his independent professionalism, experience and commitment, and he can’t be easily replaced, frankly,” the Riders representative said. Alliance, Danny Pearlstein.
“Because of his clashes with the governor, he was degraded basically to running trains and buses daily, but he did not modernize the subway as he had proposed.”
Speaking to WCBS-TV last March, Byford suggested that Cuomo, who had a reputation for wanting to be the hero in all situations, could have been jealous.
“I didn’t look for the nickname ‘Train Daddy,’ I didn’t look for advertising. But the fact is that a good traffic professional does it,” he said. “We did more than 100 public events. That got a “If I didn’t like others, well, that wasn’t my intention.”
Cuomo, for his part, claimed he had never told Byford what to do. When asked if Byford was “mined,” the governor said, “In any case, he was over-mined because I dealt with his bosses.”
“I did not work with Andy Byford. I worked with him [MTA boss] Pat Foye … I worked with his seniors, “the governor told reporters last March.
Neither the governor’s office nor Byford responded to The Post’s requests for comment.