Requiem For Congestion Pricing in New York City

Opponents called it what it was - a regressive tax, and one that would hit Long Islanders and Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx residents hardest - they'd go from having free bridges to get into Manhattan to coughing up $8 a shot into Manhattan.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg refused to make any changes to the plan claiming that it was too difficult to do so at the last minute.

That's BS. You can take a permanent program and include language turning it into a pilot program in very little time. All you need to do is provide a sunset clause, a study commission to provide recommendations, and other similar language in the bill.

Heck, I'll even show how it's done (in general outline form):

Section 149: A Congestion Pricing Commission shall be created, with seven members - 2 each chosen by the Assembly Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, and one each by the State Comptroller, Governor, and the Mayor of New York City. The commission shall report back to the Legislature on July 1, 2009 and each year thereafter with adjustments and recommendations for continuance beyond the sunset date.

Section 150: This legislation shall sunset July 1, 2013 unless extended by the State after receiving recommendations to extend the program by the Congestion Pricing Commission.

It happens all the time and the LBDC (the Legislative Bill Drafting Commission) does this stuff all the time. If he wanted to compromise, Bloomberg could have gotten congestion pricing implemented in some form and thereby receive the $354 in federal funds to implement the program.

Adjusting where the congestion pricing boundaries could similarly be done - it's simply changing which streets and access points are involved.

He wanted it all, but got nothing instead.

The political games were in both chambers - the Senate was a mess yesterday as Joe Bruno gave signals that he might spring a vote on the chamber, but Democrats held out going in to a possible session that might result in them taking a position that would be extremely difficult to explain to voters come November. Bruno never called for the vote.

For much of the day, lawmakers treated congestion pricing like a game of political hot potato. After Assembly Democrats refused to touch it, the question became whether the Senate would give Mr. Bloomberg a symbolic, if hollow, victory by voting on the measure.

Senate Republicans found themselves caught in an awkward position. They didn’t want to disappoint a mayor who has been an important political patron, but also didn’t want to submit their members to a vote on an issue that could haunt them at the polls in November.

For a moment, it looked as if Senate Republicans, who claimed to have enough votes to pass the mayor’s plan, might put it on the floor. The prospect was real enough to rattle the nerves of Senate Democrats, who camped out in a conference room and refused to take their seats in the chamber until they felt confident enough that Republicans wouldn’t spring the bill on them.

After several hours of bluffs, name calling, and confusion, both conferences met to pass an emergency $81 million appropriations bill to keep government operating for another week.

“They are playing are these childish games, not willing to come out on the floor. They shouldn’t act like children,” Mr. Bruno said. He said the Senate would have voted on congestion pricing “if it served any meaningful purpose.”

So now, Bloomberg will bitch and moan about how the city lost $354 million from the feds plus the $500+ million per year in lost tolls from the congestion pricing imposition. He'll again complain about the roadblocks put up by Shelly Silver, despite the fact that many in the Brooklyn, Queens, and LI delegations opposed congestion pricing because they'd be hardest hit by the tax and the benefits would have been unclear at best for years to come until mass transit programs somehow managed to catch up.

Never mind that there were no guarantees that the money would be dedicated to mass transit and transportation programs, that money would have provided a serious boost to the city's bottom line, and Albany is kind of parochial about taxes - they want to be the ones who get the money.

There's also the hidden costs to the city that taxpayers and consumers will not have to worry about. The cost of doing business would have increased as a result of congestion pricing, and that is a savings to consumers. Congestion pricing supporters love to cite that businesses would benefit from less traffic in the city, but they ignore that the congestion pricing fees would be passed on to consumers in higher costs for goods and services throughout the City. All the money collected in congestion pricing would be coming from somewhere - and that would be from taxpayer and commuter pockets.

Meanwhile, the MTA capital budget plan is going to be out of whack because they were relying on congestion pricing to make ends meet. That situation isn't going to change anytime soon, and one has to maintain a certain amount of skepticism over MTA pronouncements over budget issues because of its historic problem with open accounting of its budget. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, the MTA promised to implement service improvements ahead of the congestion pricing as a supposed good faith measure, and yet those $30-$50 million improvements didn't even make it off the drawing board before they got canned by the MTA, citing lower real estate tax revenues. Riders and commuters know better than to trust the MTA.

The Daily News fumes at Silver's obstructionist tendencies. After all, Silver has killed the West Side Hudson Yards project, and has only his own interests in mind. Still, the congestion pricing tax was poorly conceived and wouldn't have reduced congestion because that was never its real goal. It was always about creating a new revenue stream for the City out of a new tax - and getting around the old problem of reluctance to toll the free East River bridges.

Opponents to congestion pricing didn't particularly appreciate Bloomberg's bully tactics - his way or the high way.

In other words, politics as usual in New York City.