She wants to be governor, but she wants to throw transit under the bus.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, who announced her long-rumored run for governor on Friday, used her first interview to impugn congestion pricing, one of the most important revenue streams of the MTA.
“The congestion pricing tax is a tax on workers," she told radio host Sid Rosenberg (yes, the same Sid Rosenberg who joked with Andrew Cuomo about Zohran Mamdani “cheering” a terrorist attack on New York City). "It is a commuter tax.”
Beyond that, the only mention of the MTA in the Republican’s official campaign materials is a launch video that depicts the immolation of Debrina Kawam on the subway last year — portending a campaign that will treat transit not as the life-blood of New York, but as a political pawn to stoke fear and anxiety.
It's odd to hear the Plattsburgh-area legislator and longtime ally of President Trump undermine the MTA, as she clearly knows its benefit; her district is home to at least 9,000 workers at companies that sell services or material to the state-run transit authority. And although Stefanik has voted against federal funding for the MTA, she has also demanded more funding at other times. That could complicate her outreach to transit labor unions, especially those of the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North, whose ranks are populated by conservative suburbanites.
The bigger problem is that Stefanik’s campaign materials continue the New York State GOP’s modern tradition of ignoring the fiscal health of the MTA in favor of fear-mongering and culture-warring. Like Stefanik so far, the most recent Republican candidate for governor, Lee Zeldin, focused his campaign on law and order and the supposed “scam” of congestion pricing, while ignoring the need to maintain and expand its transit capacity. Reminder: He lost.
Even Marc Molinaro, the last Republican candidate for governor to offer a comprehensive transit platform, flip-flopped under Trump’s ubiquitous influence, attacking congestion pricing and the MTA. Trump rewarded the former Dutchess County executive and U.S. representative with the top job at the Federal Transit Administration.
The biggest question mark remains Stefanik’s plan for congestion pricing. The toll turned into a national culture war after Trump tried (and failed) to kill it in February. It’s a critical source of funding for dozens of significant transit projects.
Stefanik is a vehement critic of the toll. In June, she signed a letter with other Republican lawmakers that praised President Trump’s stalled efforts to kill congestion pricing, which the missive called “a blatant scheme to fund Gov. Hochul’s inflated MTA budget at the expense of working families and small businesses.” (Analysis shows that it is anything but that.)
Stefanik may be exploiting the legal ambiguity created by Hochul’s machinations around congestion pricing last year. The Buffalonian’s flip-flopping — pausing the toll during an election year — created the impression that the program could be paused, unpaused, and redesigned at the sole discretion of the governor. City officials and good-government groups sued over the pause, but their efforts evaporated after Hochul reinstated the toll.
It’s unclear if Stefanik believes she can turn off the toll without legislative assent — her campaign didn’t respond to questions from Streetsblog — but transit-watchers think she can't.
“The governor appoints the plurality of the MTA board and could presumably appoint an anti-congestion-pricing plurality,” said Danny Pearlstein, the spokesperson for Riders Alliance. “The board, however, would be put in a bind due to its commitment to bondholders. It has a fiduciary duty to the MTA to maintain its solvency. In practice, it would be very hard for a new governor to stop congestion pricing.”
Pearlstein said Stefanik’s stance toward the toll echoes the mentality of former Gov. George Pataki, a Republican who favored debt service over permanent revenue streams like congestion pricing.
“Pataki’s approach was to borrow and spend,” he said. “He saddled the agency with a great deal of debt that we pay for every time we tap. Should Stefanik gain office, we would see the same sort of irresponsibility.”
