The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has nearly 700 employees in its human-resources department, 443 people in legal services (while spending $10 million on outside law firms), 444 people in public relations, marketing, and its call center, and another 166 to deal with labor relations.

The numbers are telling, as the MTA faces a multibillion-dollar financial crisis yet has no plans to slash operations in its front office, a report by the state comptroller’s office said yesterday.

“Since we can’t turn back the clock, the MTA Board must come to terms with the consequences of its past decisions and put forward a credible multiyear strategy to achieve fiscal stability,” the comptroller, Alan Hevesi, said. “That strategy must include larger savings from internal management improvements.”

The MTA’s financial woes have grown out of more than 10 years of policies by the state, the city, and the authority itself, the report says. The agency runs the city’s subways, buses, bridges, and tunnels, and two railroads, among other mass-transit entities.

What is new about the comptroller’s study is that Mr. Hevesi offered a comparative list of what the MTA has suggested cutting versus what the comptroller sees as a more sensible solution. The MTA has suggested, among other things:

* A perpetual series of fare increases – which skeptics portray as essentially a regressive tax increase that falls on those who can least afford it;

* A proposal to defer maintenance – which risks worse service now and higher costs to fix things later;

* Service cuts – which could slash ridership by 53.5 million trips a year.

“This Hevesi report shows the MTA’s stunning lack of imagination,” said a budget expert with the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon. “This is the railway version of the Washington Monument strategy. They are essentially saying, give us money or the school kids will never see the monument again. They are using scare tactics so they don’t have to make hard decisions.”

The comptroller found that the MTA’s plan for closing its budget gap in 2006 relies almost entirely on savings from service reductions and other actions that affect riders. Instead, the comptroller said, the MTA should look at its front office. The authority has many finance, procurement, technology, and human-resource functions that overlap. The MTA has budgeted $708.9 million for those functions, but the financial plan does not have any savings from consolidating those services.

The MTA’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which has a $356 million budget, identified only $140,000 in savings, including the decision to cut one vacant secretarial position, the comptroller’s report said. The Long Island Bus Line, a $100 million operation, identified no savings from management improvements, the report said.

“Why can’t they take non-peak hour bus lines and contract them out?” Mr. McMahon said. “Why have a 40-seat passenger bus with two people? Bid it out and see what it takes to do it. But that is just not their way of thinking, and this Hevesi report just bears that out.”

Officials in Mr. Hevesi’s office, speaking on condition they not be identified, told The New York Sun the comptroller was particularly upset that the MTA didn’t have any management improvements laid out between now and 2008. They need to have a target and they haven’t even done that, the officials said.

Many critics of the MTA have pointed to its decision, which Albany supported, to adopt a $17 billion capital maintenance and expansion program four years ago. Even at the time that was seen as financially risky. The capital plan has strapped the authority as it struggles to pay its debts. In 1995, the MTA took $169 million out of passenger fares to make its debt payments. Now the figure is more than twice that, $401 million. By 2008 the figure is expected to reach $849 million, a quarter of the income the MTA gets from fares.

Indeed, the Hevesi report comes out at a time when the MTA is agitating for more state and city subsidies and a series of fare increases to keep it afloat. To now, the state and city have balked at providing more money. At the same time, Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg seem unwilling to support a fare increase until the MTA has proven that it has done, in the mayor’s favored parlance, “more with less.”

The city’s public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, said yesterday the MTA needs a hand and called on Mr. Pataki and Mr. Bloomberg to step in. “Governor, please, you must give more to the MTA,” she told reporters. “And Mayor, you, too.”

The MTA’s board chairman, Peter Kalikow, said the agency isn’t solely to blame for its plight.

“The MTA cannot and did not enact its Capital Program without legislative oversight and approval,” Mr. Kalikow said in response to the comptroller’s report.

The MTA had proposed reorganizing the agency in 2002, Mr. Kalikow said, but the state legislature rejected the plan. The MTA wanted to consolidate bus operations and the state Senate approved the proposal, but the Assembly never acted on it. The MTA “will continue to identify areas where we can become more efficient, but we need the assistance of the state legislature in order to carry out our most cost-effective plans,” he said.

Mr. McMahon, of the Manhattan Institute, said the pressure on the agency is likely to increase.

“This Hevesi report isn’t the end of the critique, this is just the start,” he said. “They really need to fundamentally change the way they do things. There is no evidence they are doing that. There isn’t going to be a rescue from someplace. There is no way the state is going to bail them out of this, nor should it. They shouldn’t get a nickel from riders or taxpayers until they put a lot more on the table.”

The governor will be the one with the most leverage to make that happen, as he controls the MTA chairman and six people on the 14-person MTA board.