Now that I can get my head above water after an extended charette, I wholly agree with Adam: Basically, fuck Sheldon Silver for killing Congestion Pricing for New York City.1 Of course, the New York Times is far more diplomatic, yet as scathing of Sheldon Silver:
Rarely does one man have a chance to do so much harm to so many.
New Yorkers should remember Monday as the day Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, used the power of his office to deprive them of $354 million in federal funds to help mass transporation, ease traffic congestion and improve the air that all New Yorkers breathe.
Backed by his Democratic conference, the speaker killed congestion pricing in the most cowardly way: without even holding a vote. Mr. Silver said so many members of his own conference were against the plan that it would never pass. How many? Who knows? The speaker hid behind closed doors to keep the public from watching his cronies do the deed.
It isn’t just that the door was closed on congestion pricing but that it was defeated in a profoundly undemocratic (yet typical of Albany) method. What transpired here is also analogous with the push for universal health care in President Clinton’s first term. While Speaker Silver, who incidentally represents Lower Manhattan, was instrumental in the blocking of the congestion pricing proposal (and is thus responsible for the resulting $17.5 billion MTA shortfall) the placing of the shiv was aided and abetted by plenty of outer borough legislators; I’m looking at you Richard Brodsky from Westchester. I think it is high-time to reinstate the commuter tax for those who use our services yet pay nothing for them:
A recent report by two Hunter College economists Howard Chernick and Oleysa Tkacheva estimates that commuters cost the city between 2.2 and 3.8 percent of the city budget, or between $1.2 and $1.9 billion a year. The annual cost to the police force alone is an additional $185 million. The same report found that on average commuters earned 37 percent more than residents. The authors concluded that “the elimination of the commuter tax imposed a significant, and in our view, unfair fiscal burden on the City of New York.” 2
Food for thought: as I’ve postulated before about the possibilities of New York City becoming the 51st State, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) already apportions data along similar lines; the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area is a Metropolitan Statistical Area with a population of 18,815,988 according to the July 1, 2007 U.S. Census Bureau estimates. All we need now is the courtroom scene in Miracle on 34th Street to transpire, with large bags of mail and a judge wanting to be reelected; perhaps then New York City could become a state.
Lastly, I recommend reading this postmortem, Machiavelli meets the Big Apple – Ten reasons NYC’s congestion pricing plan went belly up:
1. Machiavelli’s dictum: “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand,” Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, “than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things … the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.” When pricing advocates return with a new plan — perhaps a variant of the Kheel Plan — we will do well to take this dictum to heart.