By IZABELA RUTKOWSKI

Hundreds of protesting commuters came to the MTA’s last public hearing before a vote on proposed service cuts that the agency says are needed to close a $400 million budget gap.

“The MTA is cash strapped?” Brooklyn resident Tony Murphy screamed during a March 4 hearing, pointing at 12 MTA board members who sat on a stage at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. “Brothers and sisters, does this body look cash-strapped to you?”

According to MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz, 154 commuters registered to deliver speeches of up to three minutes.

Deborah Short came from Far Rockaway to speak about the fare increases. “When would this insane beast ever be satisfied?” she asked. “I expect them to not raise the fares.”

The biggest applause came from the audience when 16-year-old Prisila Ruiz started to cry while talking to the board members about their plan to eliminate the free MetroCard for students. “What are you going to do if people stop going to school and start taking drugs?” she asked, as her friends from Aquinas High School in the Bronx started to shout: “Answer! Answer!”

“If my parents have to pay for my MetroCard my brother would probably have to stop taking his college classes,” Prisila said after testifying. “Buying a MetroCard for me would mean spending an additional thousand dollars for my family.”

The MetroCard issue was also a subject of Manhattan Borough President Scot Stringer’s testimony. “It’s easier to go after the kids rather than the politicians,” he said.

The MTA says that in December, it passed a 2010 budget that proposed closing the budget gap through laying off employees, mostly booth workers and bus drivers; eliminating 15 bus lines and two subway lines; and ending free MetroCards for students. The MTA is also considering a partial reduction of the Access-a-Ride service and decreasing the frequency of service on 11 subway lines. The MTA board will make the final vote on the budget cuts on March 24.

“Not all these cuts have to happen,” said Jason Chin-Fatt of the Straphangers Campaign, who distributed banners at the hearing. “We have a solution for that. It involves MTA using 10 percent of their stimulus funding that they received,” he said. “It’s written into the law that they can use 10 percent of the stimulus funding for operating costs including service or students’ MetroCards.”

The MTA published a 120-page proposal offering ways to close the budget gap and didn’t mention other solutions than the service cuts.

Chin-Fatt said he also supports the booth workers and bus drivers who started their demonstration five hours before the public hearing. Six-hundred members of the Transport Workers Union gathered in front of the Fashion Institute building holding banners and screaming to save their jobs.

“These are the eyes and ears of our stations,” said Chin-Fatt about the booth workers. “They are a link to the outside world and we will always support them.”