Bronx Rep Pedro Espada, Anti-Toll Stalwart, Lives in Westchester

3:34 PM EDT on April 21, 2009

It's hard to make out through the tinted glass, but Pedro Espada is holding a baby in front of his face to block the CBS2 cameras.

How's this for windshield perspective? One of the loudest foes of a sensible MTA funding solution, Fare Hike Four member Pedro Espada, doesn't even reside in the Bronx district that he represents. Rather than make his home in the transit dependent 33rd District, Espada lives in leafy Mamaroneck, reports Marcia Kramer of CBS2:

"He's there a long time. Yeah, he's there all week," neighbor Benny Protano said.
CBS 2 HD undercover video found cars registered to Espada parked in hisMamaroneck driveway at night and again the next morning, indicatingthat he slept in Mamaroneck.
Espada does own a co-op in the Bronx -- at 325 East 201st St.
Members of the co-op board told CBS 2 HD that while Sen. Espada owns an apartment there he doesn't live here.

I suppose this helps to explain why New York City's State Senate delegation
seems so willing to saddle transit riders with half-baked schemes to
fund the MTA. The taxi surcharge to fund out-of-town roads and bridges is even starting to make sense.

More than seventy percent of the New Yorkers whom Espada purports to represent don't own cars. That's not how Espada rolls, however:

He also said that when he is in Albany one of his cars is "alwaysparked outside" Mamaroneck or the Bronx because he can only drive onecar at a time.
But during the time CBS 2 HD watched Espada's Mamaroneck house both his cars were parked there.

This news probably isn't going over well with voters in the 33rd, and legally speaking, Kramer reports, Espada's choice of primary residence violates the state constitution. Still, with the State Senate's latest toll-less transit plan alive in Albany, on balance it's been a good day for Pedro Espada.

Ben Fried

Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.

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