Second Avenue freeze out.
Donald Trump's decision to suspend federal money for the Second Avenue Subway will threaten the project's forward momentum within weeks, Streetsblog has learned.
The president blocked the funds in October, during a tantrum about the shutdown of the federal government — and the MTA has still not yet received the money earmarked for the subway expansion, multiple sources said.
The lack of funding won't immediately stop work underneath East Harlem, but a knowledgeable source said the MTA will be unable to award a contract to begin excavation of the station caverns at 106th and 125th streets if Trump does not restore the funds by March.
The situation closely resembles the one around the Gateway Development Corporation, which is building a new tunnel between New York and New Jersey. Trump also froze Gateway's funding in October, alongside the MTA's, after the federal government implausibly insisted that both agencies did not comply with its new guidelines around minority- and women-owned contractors.
Congress ended the shutdown on Nov. 12. But on Tuesday, GDC CEO Tom Prendergast told the Gateway board that U.S. DOT had not released the $12 billion — even though the corporation certified, in letters on Dec. 8 and Jan. 8, that it complied with the new guidelines.
Prendergast said work on the Gateway project will cease on Feb. 6 if the money is not disbursed. The MTA has a bit more runway than that, and sources said that the agency will be able to avoid a full work stoppage on the Second Avenue Subway. Still, delaying the contract award for the station work will deal a blow to the subway's expansion.
In December, MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said the MTA faced a review similar to the one Prendergast described. But he was confident that the federal government would eventually certify the agency's policies around minority- or women-owned businesses.
"[U.S. DOT] made some specific requests and demands on changing our Disadvantaged Businesses Enterprise program," Lieber told reporters last month. "They sent us some specific directions, and it looks like things that we can comply with. We just have to go through a process of re-certifying companies to participate in this DBE program. So we're in dialogue with the federal government on that as recently as yesterday, and it looks like we're going to be able to move forward."
But MTA sources told Streetsblog that the U.S. DOT still refuses to release the funds, even though the agency answered all of U.S. DOT's questions and brought itself into compliance with the new DBE certification.
The demand to comply with the new rules appears to be a flimsy pretext to interfere with New York. The feds created the document containing the new rules just hours before the government shut down, and they ruled the MTA and Gateway were out of compliance almost immediately after the document's creation.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, but told the Daily News that "there is nothing stopping Democrats from prioritizing the interests of Americans over illegal aliens and getting this project back on track."
Advocates pressed New York officials to initiate litigation over the federal government's shifting goalposts and arbitrary refusal to release money owed to the MTA.
"Congress appropriated the money, the DOT isn't awarding it," said Reinvent Albany Senior Policy Advisor Rachael Fauss. "Sue them."
