If there’s any wisdom in the classic tune “Little Things Mean a Lot,” then feature the fare hike by Governor Kathy Hochul’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority to $3 a ride. New Yorkers are irate, per the New York Post, with a resident at a hearing griping at the MTA brass: “Are you delusional?” To be sure, the extra dime might not break the bank for most riders — at least not for those who pay the fare. There’s the rub, though. Who’s paying?

Call it the $800 million question. That grim statistic is, per the MTA’s chairman, Janno Lieber, the cost, in terms of lost revenue to the agency, of fare evasion in 2024. Compared against the $700 million cost cited for 2022, Mr. Lieber’s estimate suggests that the problem is worsening. The Times has reported that some 48 percent of bus riders dodge the fare box. Subway riders, too, are familiar with the seeming normalization of turnstile jumping.

The MTA’s all-too-apparent policy of turning a blind eye to this scourge gives the green light to lawlessness. Yet to a degree, the agency, along with the NYPD, has its hands tied. Law-abiding, fare-paying New Yorkers have the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, and liberal district attorneys like Alvin Bragg to thank for this trend. In 2022, Mr. Bragg announced that his office would no longer prosecute fare evasion.

When Mr. Bragg was queried about this policy default, he brushed off the concern. CNN’s John Berman asked him: “If you’re not going to prosecute fare evasion, why should I pay a subway fare?” Manhattan’s top law enforcement figure replied: “If you’ve got an E-ZPass, and you go through the toll, they don’t stop you and arrest you there.” The district attorney said “they send you a ticket. That’s what we need to do on fare evasion.”

Yet policing of turnstile jumping was a key element of the “Broken Windows” strategy of enforcing so-called quality of life offenses, along with, say, vandalism and graffiti, because the same people who commit minor misdeeds go on to perpetrate major crimes. Patrolling petty crimes, too, helps keep cities orderly and liveable for law-abiding residents. Broken Windows policing helped New York slash crime to historic lows under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.

Yet liberals never liked the tactic, insinuating that there is a racial disparity in how minor crimes are policed. Critics call Broken Window policing “discriminatory, used as a tool to target minorities,” Harvard scholar George Kelling and Commissioner William Bratton allege. Others cavil that the policy seeks “to impose a white middle-class morality on urban populations,” Messrs. Kelling and Bratton add. 

That stripe of leftist absurdity is taken as gospel truth by officials like Ms. James. In 2020, she in effect torpedoed the NYPD’s efforts to police fare evasion by launching an investigation into whether the policy led to “targeting communities of color.” She suggested that NYPD “officers have exhibited racial biases or engaged in discriminatory practices in their enforcement of these laws and regulations at subway stations throughout the city.”

That insult to the NYPD’s officers — less than half of whom, since 2010, are white — prompted the department to aver that New York’s Finest “enforce the law fairly and equally without consideration of race.” Yet Ms. James’s fellow traveler, Mayor Bill de Blasio, simpered that “the attorney general’s asking an important question.” Since then, it’s been off to the races for fare evaders, helping fuel the MTA’s swollen budget deficits.

It’s testament to the warped judgment of New York’s liberal leaders that instead of addressing the fare evasion crisis, or cutting costs, the MTA instead set up congestion tolls on motorists to make up the shortfall. The fare boost, likewise, is a “little thing” that reflects a broader problem. Leftists are indulging the criminality that impairs quality of life for law-abiding citizens who pay the price, at the turnstile and in taxes, for rising social disorder.