Quinn Makes Pricing Panel Picks

From Elizabeth Benjamin at The Daily Politics:

Aides to Council Speaker Christine Quinn are calling Council members this morning with the news that none of them made the cut when it came to her three appointments to the 17-member city/state commission that will decide the fate of Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan.

According to Council sources, Quinn’s appointees will include Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, who, aside from Bloomberg himself, has been perhaps the most outspoken proponent of congestion pricing and whose organization spent considerable time and cash on pushing the mayor’s plan.

Another Quinn pick is Ed Reed, a top aide to the Rev. Floyd Flake, whose Queens church, Allen AME, was one of several that played host to Bloomberg in July as he made an eleventh-hour push on a congestion pricing deal by arguing that reducing traffic is an environmental justice issue because cleaner air would result in fewer cases of asthma in kids.

The third Quinn appointee, whose name I have yet to confirm, is someone from the Drum Major Institute, which pushed back against congestion pricing opponents’ claims that the mayor’s plan would hurt the middle class.

A number of Council members are very unhappy with Quinn’s choices, which clearly were made with an eye toward making Bloomberg happy.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the one anti-congestion pricing leader who has three appointments to the commission, is also poised to announce his picks – all of whom will be members of his Democratic conference, according to Assembly sources.