MTA boss Janno Lieber brushed off concerns Tuesday that the agency is mismanaging its massive $20 billion budget — dismissing state lawmakers’ scrutiny of congestion pricing as “grievance politics.”

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman and CEO responded to comments from US Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) that dubbed the agency the “worst-run authority in America” and called for Lieber’s ouster.

“This is grievance politics, not substance politics,” Lieber said. “I would say 80% of Lawler’s constituents actually ride mass transit, 1% of his constituents actually commute to the central business district and pay the toll.”

Host Willie Geist reiterated Lawler’s point, noting that with a $20 billion budget, the MTA “already should have been able to take care of the subways” without adding on the extra $9 fee for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street.

“They shouldn’t look the way they look, most of these subway stations, shouldn’t operate the way they operate, most of these trains. You shouldn’t have to then slap a $9 tax on a commuter to pour more money into a system that doesn’t appear to be working for New Yorkers,” Geist said.

Lieber defended the MTA, noting it has made “enormous strides” in terms of reliability, grown ridership and expanded with construction on the Second Avenue subway line.

“Yeah, we have a long way to go, and it needs to feel safer,” Lieber said — noting that while New Yorkers currently feel a lack of public safety, it is “not fair” to say the subways have not improved.

But the MTA has been known to blow past budgets and timelines on scores of improvement projects.

MTA CEO Janno Lieber swatted away claims that the transit agency is mismanaging its $20 billion budget. Here are just a few examples of costly and/or long-delayed MTA projects:

• One of the MTA’s plans to renovate Penn Station came in at 35% more than the initial eye-watering cost of $6 billion.
• In October 2023, costs similarly ballooned for other long-awaited projects — including a $600 million boost in the pricetag of a new West Side 7 train station and a $4 billion increase for the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway, which was estimated at more than $13.5 billion.
• In November, the MTA sidelined Staten Island’s expensive new train cars — part of a $1.4 billion buy — just a month after their debut because of signal system issues.
• In December, The Post learned the agency planned to spend $1 million federal grant dollars on a study to help them understand the mind of the everyday fare evader. 

For instance, one of the plans to renovate Penn Station wasn’t even approved when it came in at 35% more than its initial eye-watering cost of $6 billion.

In October 2023, costs similarly ballooned for other long-awaited projects — including a $600 million boost in the pricetag of a new West Side 7 train station and a $4 billion increase for next phase of the Second Avenue Subway, which was estimated at more than $13.5 billion.

Even the MTA itself had no idea why costs have piled so high.

In 2019, Lieber — then the agency’s construction chief — said the authority was beginning to investigate why New York City subways tend to cost so much more than they do in other cities.

“We have to collect data,” he told state lawmakers at a legislative hearing on the agency’s then-$51.1 billion capital plan.

Other times, the MTA appears to pour money into hair-brained schemes — such as a plan to spend $1 million federal grant dollars on a study to help the agency  understand the mind of the everyday fare evader.

And then there’s the times the agency spends the cash, but the plans still don’t work out — such as in November, when it  sidelined Staten Island’s expensive new train cars just a month after their debut because of signal system issues.

The cars were part of a $1.4 billion buy that was supposed to upgrade Staten Island Railway’s antiquated cars.

“They cry poverty when they’re forcing New Yorkers to pay ridiculous tolls to drive into Manhattan, yet somehow they manage to find enough money to pay for these inane studies,” City Council Member Joann Ariola (R-Queens) told The Post.

Meanwhile, there’s the exploding, high-profile crime — punctuated by horrific recent incidents such as the sleeping subway rider who was allegedly torched to death by a drunken migrant, or the knife-wielding, violent recidivist accused of stabbing two people on the subway last week.

Earlier this week, Lieber brushed off concerns about subway crime as being “in people’s heads” while discussing congestion pricing — which will likely force more New Yorkers into the problem-plagued public transit system.

Lieber, during a Monday morning interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance,” argued, similarly to Mayor Eric Adams, that a rash of recent horrifying attacks are distracting from the city’s successes in making the subways safer.

 “Some of these high-profile incidents, you know, terrible attacks have gotten in people’s heads and made the whole system feel unsafe,” he said.

“The overall stats are positive.”Lieber on Tuesday also said on “Morning Joe” that he’d gone to Lawler to ask him to get the MTA more money from Congress but the legislator did nothing.

“New York gets 45% of the mass transit riders in the United States, we get 17% of federal money. I said, ‘Congressman, you’re in the majority. Can you help us?’ Never heard from him again,” Lieber said.

Lieber lamented that Lawler was “selling an outdated cartoon,” telling hosts, “I wish we had the old New York GOP that went to Washington and worked for New Yorkers who they actually represent.”

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli expressed bewilderment similar to Lawler’s Tuesday over the MTA’s wild spending habits, noting on NY1 that while congestion pricing will bring in a lot of money, it won’t settle the agency’s new capital plan, which has a funding gap of $33 billion.

“This discussion of the MTA and how we fund it is not going to be off the table just with congestion pricing,” DiNapoli said.

“The MTA needs to be much more efficient and much more cost-conscious, no question about it … But I think the other piece is that people need to see results,” DiNapoli said.

“They need to see that the system will be maintained. Well, there will be rolling stock, new trains, you know, new equipment. They need to not only be paying this extra toll, they want to see the results.”

Other pols similarly castigated both Lieber and the agency he runs.

“Questioning why it takes eight times the amount of money as other cities to build a mile of subway, or why it cost the same to build an elevator as it does to send a rocket into orbit, or why the MTA is already asking for more money on day one of congestion pricing isn’t grievance politics,” Joe Borelli, a city councilman and Staten Island Republican, said Tuesday.

“Lieber has to remove his head from his caboose to see all this.”

Bob Holden, a Democrat from Queens, added that “Of course, King Lieber opposes audits of his agency — he knows they’d uncover the waste and abuse caused by his mismanagement and the overpaid sycophants he surrounds himself with.”

“This isn’t grievance politics; it’s about protecting taxpayer dollars and stopping unnecessary scams like the congestion pricing tax,” Holden

And David Carr, a Staten Island Republican, said he wasn’t surprised Lieber opposes being held to account.

“If anything, Janno Lieber’s opposition makes clear how necessary this probe actually is,” Carr said.

“We can’t let the current and past leaderships’ failures prevent us from taking the first step towards saving our transit system from the very people who have run it into the ground.”

— Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy