Five months after Gov. Hochul tried to kill congestion pricing under the guise of a "temporary pause," she threw herself a celebratory press on Thursday to announce the toll's return early next year at $9.
The gridlock governor hailed herself for her leadership and principled governance, but the afternoon's confab was actually a display of political delusion and self-aggrandizement as Hochul still failed to grasp that car commuters make up a small fraction of working people with jobs in the future toll zone of Manhattan below 60th Street.
As Hochul told it, in June she "stood up on behalf of hard working families and simply said, 'No, no to a new $15 congestion toll.'" As for the "working families" who rely on the train and the bus to get to work — also known as 90 percent of commuters into the Manhattan central business district — Hochul declined to brag about how she said "yes" to traffic in front of those buses and "no" to new subway elevators, trains and upgraded train signals.
She argued that a $15 toll is too high for drivers, so she gave them a 40-percent discount. And Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North customers? No such discount — those suckers are still paying roughly $15 per day in fares.
The timeline for the long-awaited transit improvements — promised after the 2017 subway crisis — remains still unknown at this point, despite the promise that the toll will be turned on for real this time on Jan. 5, 2025. The money for the work will now come in over a longer period, thanks to the lower toll revenue, so there will be a "longer time horizon of how we are able to deliver projects," a Hochul administration official told reporters in a startling admission, given the governor's leadership boasts.
So much for not kicking the can down the road, right? The new toll is expected to raise about two-thirds as much revenue, which means it will take much longer to pay back the $15 billion in bonds that were financing part of the current five-year capital reconstruction plan.
So subway riders will be left waiting, still. But at least the delay and the lower toll managed to win over some of congestion pricing's critics, right? No, it did not.
Staten Island elected officials, United Federation of Teachers President Mike Mulgrew, bad data maven Rep. Josh Gottheimer, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, state Senator James Skoufis and Hudson Valley Rep. Pat Ryan have all weighed in to say the same thing they always have about congestion pricing: It's too much money. It's picking on New Jersey residents. It's unfair. The traffic, pollution and road violence they cause is a small price to pay for, um, busy diners...?
And there's still a GoFundMe campaign to kill the tolls (one of the donors is the CEO of a parking garage, which is the chef's kiss).
Asked what she would say if someone at the Pershing Square Diner told her that a $9 toll was still too much money, the governor said that she'd just have to tell them that she had no choice but to implement congestion pricing all along — which is contrary to what she argued in court.
"I understand how hard this is, but this is the law of the state of New York. I'm obligated to follow New York law," Hochul said — a full 180 from her prior claim that following the law was merely one of multiple options available to her.
But at least the governor on Thursday finally tried — unsuccessfully — to explain why she never spoke about the injustice of the $15 toll after her hand-picked Traffic Mobility Review Board recommended it and her hand-picked MTA board approved it. Hochul, who did not express any concerns or second thoughts about congestion pricing until her shock June announcement, claimed she couldn't express those concerns until this year's state budget process sorted itself out.
"I had to conclude the budget process so I would know exactly what we stood financially as I looked to tackle the next challenge," she explained, adding that her secret plan of action had been to somehow find leftover money after the budget was set and use that money to pay down a congestion pricing discount.
In addition to not making much sense, Hochul's budget excuse retcons the events in Albany before the end of the session, where she tried to kill congestion pricing entirely by getting legislators to approve a $1 billion-per-year IOU for the MTA. There was no talk of using that money for some kind of toll rebate plan, as she now suggests.
As Hochul sees it, her actions since June — the pause, the months of trashing the toll as an attack on working people, the waffling non-commitment to the MTA's upcoming 2025-29 capital plan, the casual decision to risk adding a billion dollars to the MTA deficit — weren't callow and unthinking, but bold and muscular leadership that no other leader could pull off.
"It is tough to do this, and it's so easy to kick the can down the road. It is so easy to do that, and it's not something I'm prepared to do," the governor said.
Ironically, that's essentrially how Hochul described herself last December when she celebrated the $15 toll she now wants credit for killing: "From time to time, leaders are called upon to envision a better future, be bold in the implementation and execution and be undaunted by the opposition," she said at the time.
It's unclear if she was trying to convince New Yorkers of her governing prowess on Tuesday, or convince herself. Either way, the state's voters know better than ever what type of executive they have running the state.
After trying to claim credit for killing a congestion toll she personally touted and saw nearly to execution, Hochul has flipped again — and the outcome is somehow worse than what supporters or opponents of said tolls had hoped for.
That outcome is a toll that will do the bare minimum. One that Director of State Operations Kathryn Garcia claimed will hit the federal requirements to knock down traffic by 10 percent and vehicle miles traveled by 5 percent, which is short of the 17-percent reduction in traffic the original toll was going to bring. Nor did Garcia or anyone else in the Executive Office bring their notes to show the public the numbers.
The MTA Board will rubber stamp the new toll next on Wednesday, the state and city and federal government will sign an agreement allowing the toll to proceed and sometime in January poor Sam Schwartz will finally be able to pop his long-awaited bottle of champagne.
If it were up to Hochul, it would be a 40-percent smaller bottle.
