MTA Board member David Mack rejects calls to resign over parking in paratransit spot

David Mack said he will not step down from his post as Nassau County’s representative on the MTA Board as disability rights advocates called for him to resign after being caught parking in a spot designated for paratransit vehicles while attending an MTA Board meeting last week.

At the Nov. 18 meeting in lower Manhattan, Mack cast the lone vote against congestion pricing, arguing, in part, that traffic could be better addressed by enforcing parking laws.

Using a police-assigned parking placard, Mack, who holds the unsalaried title of first assistant commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department, left his car in a parking spot for Access-a-Ride vehicles outside the MTA's Paratransit Assessment Center, near the authority's headquarters, Mack and MTA officials said.

Mack, a real estate developer from Kings Point who has been previously accused of exploiting government-issued perks including police parking placards, said only a small portion of his car was in the Access-a-Ride vehicle spot. He dismissed the calls for his resignation, citing a long history of supporting people with disabilities through his charitable work.

"David Mack shouldn’t be on the MTA Board," Joseph Rappaport, executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, said in an interview Thursday, adding Mack’s behavior "really shows his disregard for the law, and for people with disabilities."

At the start of the specially scheduled board meeting to vote on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s retooled congestion pricing plan, MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber, who has frequently clashed with Mack, took to the microphone to announce that a car with "a Nassau County placard of some kind" was blocking Access-a-Ride vehicles from picking up and dropping off passengers with disabilities.

"Please move your car if you’re the person in question," said Lieber, noting the MTA has been trying to "bear down" on cars illegally parking in Access-a-Ride spots.

Following a report on the website Streetsblog.org that it was Mack’s 2025 Buick Encore GX that was illegally parked in the spot, the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled and Manhattan-based Disabled in Action — another disability rights advocacy group — issued a statement calling on Mack to step down, and for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and Hochul to demand his resignation.

"The MTA board needs dedicated public servants who respect the law and all MTA riders, including disabled New Yorkers. Mr. Mack does not meet those standards," the advocates wrote in their statement. "Disabled people put up with a lot when riding the buses, trains and paratransit, but for an MTA commissioner to illegally park in a space designated for them is a bridge too far."

Blakeman spokesman Christopher Boyle declined to comment. Representatives for Hochul did not respond to requests for comment. MTA spokesman David Steckel also would not comment on the incident.

Mack, in an interview Thursday, called the incident "a total exaggeration," because only "the rear quarter" of his car extended into the Access-a-Ride spot. Asked about the advocates’ pressuring Hochul and Blakeman to call for his resignation, Mack said, "Oh, come on. They’re not going to do anything like that."

"I have more experience than anyone else on that board," said Mack, who dismissed calls for his resignation. "Don’t even think about it."

Mack said because he lives with a debilitating back problem that limits his mobility, " There's no better advocate for the handicapped than myself."

First joined MTA in 1993

Mack, 82, first joined the MTA Board in 1993 under the recommendation of then-Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta. A prolific political donor to both Democratic and Republican candidates, he has been recommended for the MTA Board post by every Nassau County executive since.

Mack, a law enforcement enthusiast with multiple honorary police titles, resigned from the MTA Board under pressure in 2009 after then-Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo accused him of failing to cooperate in an investigation into the state police. A decade later, Cuomo reappointed him to the post, under the recommendation of then-County Executive Laura Curran.

He was reappointed in 2022 under Blakeman’s recommendation. Later that year, Mack also made headlines for his parking habits when, according to witnesses, he was involved in a heated verbal altercation with Lieber over Lieber’s decision to no longer offer MTA Board members agency-issued parking placards.

Mack, in the interview last week, said he was only "looking out for my fellow board members," who are unpaid, and that he and Lieber now "get along very well."

However, Mack has publicly clashed with MTA leadership and the rest of the board over his opposition to congestion pricing, which he has said could hurt New York City’s economic recovery from COVID-19 by deterring people from visiting Manhattan.

It’s a view similar to that shared by another prominent congestion pricing opponent, President-elect Donald Trump, who has spoken out against the plan.

Mack noted he’s known Trump for 72 years, having grown up in the same Jamaica Estates neighborhood as the former president. Mack said he considers Trump a friend and that the two had lunch together earlier this month. Asked if that relationship could prove beneficial to the MTA, Mack replied, "What do you think?"

Still, with congestion pricing having received final federal approval last week and set to take effect on Jan. 5, Mack said he "will not get involved" with the issue further, "unless I’m asked to do so."

Before casting his "no" vote against the tolling plan last week, Mack said congestion in Manhattan was due, in part, to the fact that "we have absolutely no enforcement of the parking" rules, which leads to trucks double parking and tying up traffic. Mack, who has an MTA-issued free E-ZPass account, will not have to pay the new tolls.

Mack’s opposition to congestion pricing has also drawn the ire of disability rights advocates, because the MTA has said some of the revenue generated from the new tolls would go toward making the transit system more accessible.

Jean Ryan, president of Disabled in Action, said, after standing in the way of accessibility improvements with his vote against congestion pricing, Mack’s parking faux pas was "icing on the cake, in a bad way."

"I think, mostly, we feel like, why should somebody be able to block us?" Ryan said. "It’s not OK."

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.