Blame Game Continues: Smith Swipes at MTA, Monserrate Goes Anti-Toll

There's MTA rescue news today from the State Senate, and none of it good. 

Queens Senator Hiram Monserrate, who had considered new tolls on East and Harlem River bridges acceptable as a "last resort," has flip-flopped. The Daily Politics reports that Monserrate now opposes new tolls, and faults the MTA for "failing to explain 'specifically' how toll revenue would be used to pay for service and capital improvements." From a statement released today:

Monserrate presides over a district where 53 percent of presumably hard-working households do not own cars and rely on transit, while less than five percent drive or carpool into Lower Manhattan for work. Still it looks as if his own windshield perspective has clouded his judgment enough that he would abandon the only viable plan in existence for a proposal that is positively Weiner-esque in its implausibility.

In other developments, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith this morning laid his inability to unite the Democratic bloc at the feet of the MTA itself. Here is Smith, again from The Daily Politics:

While he did not declare tolls to be completely off the table, Smith says he is not counting votes because he has not seen a proposal -- including the Ravitch plan, apparently -- which "is worthy of having that kind of discussion."