Amid near-daily transportation crises and service interruptions that have inflicted extensive delays on irate commuters, Rep. Anthony Weiner yesterday attacked Mayor Bloomberg for “starving” the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of funds. He also called for reforms that would give the city, not the state, a controlling share of the authority’s executive board.

Speaking to the New York University Law School Democrats, Mr. Weiner dismissed the mayor’s attempts to shift blame to the MTA for the recent spate of fires, power failures, and other commuter inconveniences, saying a large part of the culpability for the current state of city transit lies with Mr. Bloomberg himself.

At a press conference at City Hall yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg said “the MTA has been underfunding for decades, and continues to do so. And it would be disappointing if Albany does not come up with more monies for them, because if you don’t keep your technology up to date – if you don’t keep replacing things – you will have more and more breakdowns.”

Mr. Weiner said the mayor was protesting too much, arguing that Mr. Bloomberg’s resistance to using an open bidding process to award the development rights of the West Side rail yards – owned by the MTA, which plans to use proceeds from the sale of the property to offset a projected shortfall in its budget – was cheating straphangers. Before the MTA opened the bidding process for the rail yards in February, the Jets football organization had bid $100 million to put a stadium on the site.

Competition – particularly from the Jets’ rival, Cablevision – drove the Jets’ offer up to $720 million by Monday’s deadline for submitting final bids. Looking at the increase, Mr. Weiner said, “$600 million at least could have been stolen from the people of New York” as a result of the mayor’s preferential treatment of the Jets, adding that the money from the sale “goes directly to the MTA, and directly to help riders.”

While the bids submitted Monday were significantly higher than the Jets’ original proposal, Mr. Weiner said the mayor’s error in not completely opening bidding from the outset meant that the transportation authority will ultimately receive far less for the rail yards than the market price. And while other parties were eventually allowed to join the Jets in making offers for the rail yards, Mr. Weiner denounced the current process for still being insufficiently open. This is because the MTA must determine to whom it will award the rights to develop the rail yards by March 31. Allotting merely nine days to arrive at a decision that will affect the city for decades was unacceptable, Mr. Weiner said.

In addition to allowing more time for the MTA to evaluate and decide on the competing offers, Mr. Weiner said, the bids themselves should be made accessible to all New Yorkers on the Internet, especially as they are not currently available for public review. The congressman called on the city and state controllers to conduct full audits of all bids for the site, and said a body more independent than the MTA should be involved in deciding the final outcome of the Hudson Yards.

Beyond Mr. Bloomberg’s negligence on the West Side, Mr. Weiner said, the mayor was also to be faulted for his acquiescence to Albany and Washington when forces in the state and national capitals conspired to keep transportation funding out of city coffers.

In a press release accompanying his speech, Mr. Weiner announced that the state has not contributed to the MTA’s capital fund since 2000. The Democratic congressman sniped at his Republican colleagues for trying to shortchange the city in the Transportation Equity Act, federal legislation that could direct millions of dollars to the city for transit improvements. Instead of fighting Governor Pataki, and Washington Republicans, to bring New York City its due, Mr. Weiner said, the mayor has remained “silent,” arguing that it would be “hard to find a less competent mayor advocating for us in Washington and Albany.”

The congressman said he would push for a restructuring of the MTA’s board so that the mayor would have eight appointments to the governor’s four, reversing the state’s present controlling majority to allow for mayoral accountability on matters of city transit.

Many New Yorkers feel some kind of accountability is necessary after a series of near-daily malfunctions has crippled New York transportation and left thousands of commuters stranded. Yesterday morning, hours before Mr. Weiner’s speech, a “smoke condition” from a shorted cable left an East River tunnel out of service for about 90 minutes. The tunnel is used by the Long Island Rail Road, which services around 100,000 commuters during the morning rush hour, according to a railroad spokesman, Sam Zambuto. Mr. Zambuto said the smoke condition caused an average delay of 14 minutes for trains running into Pennsylvania Station. Eastbound service experienced delays of about 30 minutes, he added, and riders on two trains were delayed 50 minutes.

Mr. Bloomberg, however, defended his commitment to New York transportation yesterday, highlighting planned improvements to the No. 7 line at a City Hall press conference. In response to Mr. Weiner’s speech, a spokesman for the mayor, Ed Skyler, said: “While Weiner was wasting what little clout he has in Congress on funding asteroid protection, the mayor was working hard to get federal funding for MTA projects as well as committing city capital dollars to fund the extension of a subway line for the first time in history.” Mr. Skyler was referring to Mr. Weiner’s participation in the House Science Committee.