You may recall that New York Governor Karen Kathy Hochul shut down the congestion pricing scheme for downtown Manhattan, claiming, among other things, that she talked to the owners of 3 diners who said that it would destroy their businesses.
That last claim was a lie, the good folks at Gothamists went to the 3 diners that she mentioned, and while the confirm her eating there, none of them discussed congestion pricing.
She also claimed that people who work after hours would be impoverished by these fees getting in and out of downtown in the wee hours of the morning, despite the fact that late night fees were less than ¼ that charged at peak hours.
This, of course, means that the roughly $1 billion that would have gone to mass transit is missing from the MTA budget.
Immediately following, car dealers set up a $100 a plate fundraiser for her. (What a coincidence?)
One of the interesting thing is that the congestion pricing program was instituted through legislation, and it appears that she lacked the authority to postpone the program without getting approval from the MTA, and now the New York City Comptroller has sued to roll back her action:
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York may believe she has the power to unilaterally shut down the nation’s first congestion pricing scheme, which was slated to pump $1 billion a year into the coffers of the nation’s largest transit system.
Not everyone thinks she’s right, and her opponents are eager to prove their case in court.
The New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, has assembled a collection of stakeholders to develop a legal strategy that would underpin one or more lawsuits seeking to get the central business district toll program back on track.
Mr. Lander is planning to outline the likely avenues of litigation at a news conference on Wednesday. The gathering underscores the swelling outrage among environmental and transportation advocates who have spent years persuading the government to enact tolls on drivers entering Manhattan’s core — only to see Ms. Hochul abruptly halt the plan less than a month before it was to go into effect.
………
[Environmental lawyer] Mr. [Michael] Gerrard said the group believes Ms. Hochul may have violated a litany of laws, including the 2019 statute that the State Legislature passed and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed saying that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority “shall” implement the congestion pricing program.
“It creates a mandatory duty, and it doesn’t give the governor the authority to cancel it,” he said. “We believe that the governor broke the law by putting an indefinite hold on congestion pricing.”
………And although Ms. Hochul effectively controls the M.T.A., Janno Lieber, the authority’s chief executive, used plain language to describe her decision’s painful impact on mass transit in New York City. He said on Monday that the authority would have to drastically shrink its investment program and that his primary goal was to ensure “the system doesn’t fall apart.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Lander described Ms. Hochul’s decision as “disastrous,” and said he expected the coalition to file at least one lawsuit challenging the move, if not more.
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