Wednesday’s Headlines: One House Many Smiles Edition

We’re not popping Champagne yet, but we were pleased to see that Albany legislators pushed back hard on Gov. Hochul’s controversial scheme to reduce car insurance payments, in part, by reducing compensation paid out to victims of car crashes.

Streetsblog’s Woodstein team — Kevin Duggan and Austin C. Jefferson — has been covering the proposal since the moment Hochul revealed it in her State of the State address, and I mean every step of the way: showing what a bad idea it is, showing that it’s actually a plot by Uber, showing how unfair it is to victims, and even offering the governor a better way to cut costs.

Well, someone’s listening: late on Monday night, the state Assembly and Senate released their proposed budgets — and neither included the proposal. As rebukes go, this is somewhere between stinging and a mild negotiating ploy, but still, it suggests that not everyone in the state’s power corridors thinks that making it cheaper to drive is a good idea, given the billions of dollars wasted in crashes and the other deleterious effects of cars on our state.

Read Jefferson’s story here. Other outlets covered the budget, but no one touched the big news. Instead, you got this:

• State lawmakers are OK with a small fare-free bus pilot. (amNY)
• And they want to rein in super speeders. (amNY)
• And they want Gov. Hochul to hold firm on the climate. (NY Focus)

In other news:

• It should be easier to get special event permits, especially block parties. (The City)
• Two Bronx lawmakers want the state to fix the Cross Bronx for real. (NYDN)
• Pothole complaints are up, which happens after every winter, but the Post seems to think this is a new thing because we have a leftist mayor.
• Of course, the Post is so obsessed with cars that it didn’t even report the news: A scooter rider hit a pothole and died. (QNS)
• Here’s the least shocking headline ever: “Kaz Daughtry, Former NYC Deputy Mayor, Gave NYPD Parking Placards to Unauthorized People: Sources” (NYDN)
• The first really gorgeous day in months … and Citi Bike really botched it. (Via X.com)
• Yet another outlet — this time the esteemed Wall Street Journal — has reheated Dave Colon’s nachos without so much as buying him a Topo Chico.
• A Sanitation Department truck driver struck and injured a 14-year-old (Brooklyn Eagle) and a Department of Transportation dump truck driver killed a Queens woman (NYDN, NY Post).
• Enjoy this lobster-bull confrontation before city officials unceremoniously remove the interloper:

• And, finally, here are some of these pictures of street safety devices that were ruined by city snow plows that our readers sent in after we asked for them yesterday: