City Approves Controversial School Bus Company Buy Out

By: Rusty Brooks

The City approved of a controversial plan to buy out Reliant Transportation and the 900 routes it oversees for kids with special need and form NYC School Bus Umbrella Services and critics say this was a move done to help a major de Blasio doner who is co- owner of Reliant.

The total cost to the city $890 million

Reliant co-owner Alex Lodde, who gave $100,000 to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2014 effort to push for a Democratic majority in the state Senate, NY Post reported.

“Either the nonprofit is on the hook, or we’ll go after Reliant — and we won’t wait five years,” Michael Cordiello, president of ATU Local 1181, which represents Reliant’s 2,000 bus drivers and attendants, told The Post Sunday.

In other words, the union is making sure the bus drivers get their pension and it seems they are concerned that the change will squeeze their members out of their hard-earned pension.

Critics on the other hand, feel that this is a scheme to get the wealthy de Blasio and Democrat party doner off the hook of the driver pensions.

The Post editorial pages read: The whole thing makes no sense: Why buy a private bus company to provide the services that the city’s been contracting out for decades? The real reason seems to be that Reliant’s owner gave $100,000 to one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s political schemes a few years back.

Reliant’ has around a $142 million pension liability, according to the Post.

The editorial points out: City officials insist the purchase agreement doesn’t leave taxpayers on the hook for Reliant’s hefty obligation — but the contract, as The Post’s Susan Edelman discovered, does protect the company from having to pay a “withdrawal liability” for any pension debts five years after it is sold.

The five-year contract passed Monday night with eight members of the panel voted in favor and five abstaining, from the panel of education policy

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza defended the arrangement Monday, contending that it gave the DOE more control over busing services, NY post reported

“If I have to negotiate with third party vendors around our transportation it makes it difficult not for us but for our children and our families to be able to be transported,” he said.

“This is a lot of money to drop for a bus company during a pandemic and with the city constantly talking about how broke they are, another day in progressive utopia”, an un named public school teacher told TJV news.