The payroll-tax increase that Kathy Hochul is trying to quickly pass through the legislature to make up for the massive budget hole she created by axing congestion pricing is already dead in both chambers, says City and State reporter Rebecca C. Lewis
Governor Hochul’s new offer to lawmakers is to raid the general fund for up to $1 billion to patch up the capital plan and then to find a congestion-pricing revenue replacement when legislators come back in 2025, multiple legislative sources tell @davecolon.bsky.social
via @davecolon.bsky.social:
The state Senate is done for the night with no resolution on congestion pricing’s replacement, and will return to argue again in the morning
Can they not just override the governor? Require funding come from automated tolling systems and leave it up to governor to determine if she raises tolls everywhere or implements congestion pricing?
First off, the legislature already voted to implement congestion pricing, and the previous governor signed it. It's already law. That's part of why it's already legally dubious whether she has the authority to unilaterally postpone it by executive fiat.
Second: the benefits of congestion pricing aren't just the revenue. There are also public health and environmental benefits that can't be replicated any other way. The $15 billion total tied to congestion pricing (only $1 billion of which is direct revenue) is a lot, but still not the whole story.
Absolutely! I’m not in favor for the transit dollars but for all the positive improvements to the environment and city life. (Not an NYC resident, but looking forward to positive results there spreading to other cities.)
One-party states suuuuuuuuuck. CA is about the best you can possibly do and I expect it to stop working as well as it does relatively soon if the CA GOP doesn't remember how to be a real political party with real positions.
Only because the Democratic governor (Cuomo) didn't want to have a Democratic legislature, so he organized an illegal backroom deal in which a group of Democrats would caucus as Republicans.
Not even a joke! That's literally what happened!
I don't think that's really the complete dynamic in NY. Problem with Hochul and Cuomo before was that they prefer to triangulate and work with GOP and a few rogue Dems rather than the Democratic party caucuses in the legislature.
On the other hand, one of the problem with one-party states is that people who have no bloody business in the side of politics are forced to pretend in order to serve their own advancement.
Adams only won the Dem primary by 7,000 votes in a city of 8 million people.
He also ran on police reform, and then did the exact opposite, which shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone, but he only had to fool 7500 people.
Also the election that was the rollout of RCV, which predictably the DoE completely botched the rollout of and no one understood. Working the polls that election was as close as I’ve ever come to being murdered by an angry mob.
Since the Civil War, 3 NY governors went on to be president (and 4 more their party’s nominee) - not to mention one VP - but nowadays the state seems to mostly elect perverts and weirdos.
I don’t live in New York, but I’m well aware of how shit she is at this stuff…. Somewhere I got some great screenshots of her additions to the Covid discourse from a couple of years ago.
I find her leaden political skills alternately fascinating and infuriating (and I get to play an old favorite game, Blame Andrew Cuomo, when I think about how she ended up in office to begin with)
