MTA chief Janno Lieber defended his decision not to sign on to the federal government’s plan to revamp Penn Station Wednesday, citing a lack of trust in President Trump.

“They offered us the right to be an at-will employee of Donald Trump’s,” Lieber told the Daily News. “I’m not sure that’s a deal that makes sense for New Yorkers.”

“We can and should partner and collaborate and work with [Amtrak] on their ideas,” the MTA chairperson said. “We’re ready to collaborate, we just don’t need a new agreement that eviscerates key rights that we have in our lease in order to do it.”

“Send us the plans, brief us,” Lieber said. “We’re ready to work collaboratively.”

The comments come after a heated back-and-forth correspondence earlier this week between Lieber and Trump’s Penn Station czar, Amtrak Special Advisor Andy Byford.

Byford sent a letter on Monday to Lieber, asking that the MTA sign on to a memorandum of agreement to become a “full partner” in the federal plan to rebuild Penn Station.

The MTA — the station’s single largest tenant as the operator of the Long Island Rail Road — has declined to do so since last year, arguing that its lease with Amtrak, which runs through 2186, gives the transit authority a seat at the table regardless.

Lieber made that point bluntly in a Monday night letter, arguing that the MTA is already entitled to participate in the process without signing any additional documents. Lieber also went on to raise questions about the process by which the feds chose their master developer, whether the project could be fully funded, and whether the Trump administration was sufficiently committed to seeing the project through.

“Perhaps there are good answers to all these questions,” Lieber wrote Monday. “Perhaps we are faced with only the appearance of impropriety.

“But in the current environment, it can hardly be surprising that we have chosen to proceed cautiously,” he added.

Asked at a Wednesday meeting of the MTA’s board to expand on his concerns, Lieber offered to put it “in regular- New Yorker terms.”

“You’ve got a lease: It says that the landlord can’t tear up your house or apartment without your approval,” Lieber said to the Daily News.

“The landlord shows up, and he says, ‘I’ve got a different lease for you: How about a lease that says, I will talk to you about my plan for your apartment, but in the end I get to decide if I tear it up,'” he said. “That’s what was offered to us.”

Amtrak — in Byford’s Monday letter and again in a statement on Wednesday — claimed the memorandum of agreement would not “water down” the LIRR’s Penn Station lease.

Lieber declined to expand on exactly what rights he felt were under threat by Amtrak’s proposed memorandum, but he reiterated that the LIRR’s lease entitled the agency to participate in the Penn Station planning process.

“We don’t need to be talking about what’s in or not in the agreement,” the MTA boss said. “We have a lease, it gives us certain rights [and] we have to make sure that what they’re proposing to do helps Long Island Rail Road.”

Asked why it was important to Amtrak that the MTA sign on to a new agreement, Byford seemed to indicate the deal was for the MTA’s own benefit.

“We don’t need them to sign; we will proceed regardless,” Byford said in a statement. “Governor Hochul gets that, the MTA does not, it would appear.”

Byford, in his Monday letter, told Lieber that the proposed memorandum of agreement “is a completely stand-alone agreement and does not water down your lease as some have incorrectly speculated.”

An Amtrak spokesman Wednesday also noted that Byford has regularly cited the LIRR’s own concourse on 33rd St. as an example of good design, and that the current plan would not change it.

But Lieber recited recent history Wednesday, noting that the federal government under Trump has withheld funds guaranteed by contract on Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway, and has repeatedly attempted to kill an agreement allowing the state to charge a congestion-pricing toll.

“The Trump administration has done things to us even when we had contracts, even when we had very clear-cut rights,” he said.

“Although Andy Byford is a much-loved former member of the MTA family,” Lieber told the MTA’s board, “I’m afraid that I’m declining to be the first person in New York real estate history to say, ‘I want to enter into a real estate deal with Donald Trump with no lease and no protections’ — just take a bet and roll the dice.”

©2026 New York Daily News.
Visit nydailynews.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.