Almost 100 G riders kicked off a month-long campaign to increase service on the "forgotten stepchild" of the New York subway system, as Mr. Jeffries and others have called it.

"It's important to increase the intensity of the public campaign," Mr. Jeffries said, "to stress to the M.T.A. that G train service enhancements are absolutely necessary."

The story does not mention the disconnect between Jeffries' words and his deeds, perhaps in part because the Assemblyman felt it necessary to tightly orchestrate the proceedings. Streetsblog reader Maxwell Ciardullo tells us that, when he approached Jeffries' chief of staff prior to the event, she asked him not to bring up congestion pricing. Ciardullo popped a question at the end of Jeffries' speech anyway, but the Assemblyman quickly ushered him aside. More from his account after the jump.

So after everyone spoke and Hakeem came back up to the mike he gave a few action steps and moved to close things up. At that point, I stood up and asked him if he would take a question from a constituent. He started waving me over to the side of the room, but I asked anyway hoping the entire crowd would hear it. Essentially I said: As a constituent, you seemed largely antagonistic to CP, which would have been the largest boost to the MTA budget and capacity in years, so how do you expect them to take you seriously after you cut their budget?

And by that time he was at my side shaking my hand. He never did answer the question about what he actually expected from the MTA, but instead wanted to debate CP with me. He cited the lack of an environmental impact statement as a sticking point for him and pawned off some of the blame on the poor relationship between Silver and Bloomberg.

He also tried to call me irresponsible for shouting my question over the applause. I countered that it was irresponsible for an elected official not to take questions from his constituents.

When I pressed him on his public statements about CP he said that he sometimes has to present one way in public and work another way in private. He also portrayed himself as a driving force behind the residential parking permit program.

I kept emphasizing that as a constituent he certainly appeared to be nothing but critical of the plan from the start and that it came across every time I saw him in the papers as well as in communication with his staff. I actually emailed and called his office numerous times this spring and only got a response after emailing with State Sen. Eric Adams and asking him to nudge Hakeem to get back to me. Hakeem didn't really have an explanation for that one, but at that point he told me I should make an appointment with his office and come in and talk so we could continue the conversation.

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who is holding a rally this evening for better G train service, is drawing fire from transit advocates because of his opposition to congestion pricing. Streetsblog commenters plan to confront him at the rally. "Simply because one did not support the mayor's version of congestion pricing does not mean we shouldn't do everything possible to improve mass transit," Jeffries says.

"The mayor's version." One supposes this leaves open the possibility that there is some version of congestion pricing that Hakeem Jeffries wouldn't have opposed. But despite their attempts to pawn off the coming transit finance crisis on Mayor Bloomberg, Assembly Democrats killed a version of congestion pricing that differed markedly from the mayor's original plan. The final bill reflected the recommendations of the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, which, lest anyone forget, was created with Albany's blessing.

Judging from the response to that post, a counter-protest could be brewing. Might the Brooklyn Assemblyman regret grandstanding on this particular issue? If anyone is planning to go to the event to challenge Jeffries, hand out flyers, ask tough questions, hold up signs, or otherwise call attention to the hypocrisy of his speech, shoot us an email.

On Monday, April 7, Sheldon Silver walked out of a closed door meeting of State Assembly Democrats and announced congestion pricing was dead. Never mind that New York City's mayor and City Council supported the plan along with the governor, the State Senate and an unprecedented coalition of business, labor, environmental and civic groups. Like so much else in Albany, the decision was made in secret, without a debate, a vote or even a record of the proceedings.

Until congestion pricing came around, I never paid all that much attention to Albany. Sure, I knew about the sex and graft scandals, the "three men in a room," and the Brennan Center reports showing New York's government has more in common with the old Soviet Politburo than America's 49 other state legislatures. I knew "dysfunctional" was the official adjective to describe Albany. But the dysfunction never seemed to impinge on my own life in any immediate, tangible way. Until congestion pricing.

I was really looking forward to seeing motorists pay to drive into Lower Manhattan. While I understood the importance of $354 million in federal aid, $491 million per year in revenue for transit and fewer kids growing up with asthma, this wasn't what pumped me up. What I liked most about congestion pricing was the fact that the people who make life in New York City most miserable -- the armada of horn-honking, exhaust-spewing, space-hogging, oil-guzzling, climate change-inducing motorheads that rolls through my neighborhood every day, to and from the free East River bridges, were finally going to have to pay for the privilege.

Assembly Democrats gave lots of reasons why they couldn't support pricing, few of which dealt with substance and most of which boiled down to their feeling that an arrogant, imperious billionaire mayor and his elitist supporters were trying to stick it to New York City's poor and middle class. No matter that New York City's poor and middle class already pay a fare to ride the subway and bus and that the number one propagator of this populist claptrap was Richard Brodsky, a Westchester Assemblyman who represents the region's wealthiest Manhattan-bound car commuters, average annual income, $176,231. At least Brodsky did a good job standing up for his constituents. That's a hell of a lot more than Joan Millman, Deborah Glick, Hakeem Jeffries, Daniel O'Donnel, Jonathan Bing and the rest of the city's Assembly delegation can say for itself.

The moment I realized pricing was doomed in the legislature was when Denny Farrell, a 34-year Assembly veteran, stood up before the Congestion Mitigation Commission, of which he was a member, and delivered an impassioned speech against toll booths on the bridges between Manhattan and the Bronx. Toll booths, Farrell said, would "freeze all of northern Manhattan in gridlock" on Yankees game nights. The speech took place not at the first Commission hearing in September but at the penultimate meeting in January. Somehow, incredibly, Farrell managed to sit through four months of meetings and hearings without realizing that congestion pricing fees are collected electronically; toll booths were not part of the plan. This was the guy who was assigned to bring the work of the Commission back to his colleagues in the Assembly and he either wasn't paying attention or simply didn't care.

During Commission meetings, Farrell frequently shared his experiences driving and parking in the city. Invariably, his personal transportation anecdotes never involved a subway, bus, bike or even a sidewalk. It was a reminder that while New York state legislators are paid a middle class salary (by New York City standards, at least), they are still members of New York City's other elite -- the free riding class. Their unlimited parking privilege allows them to drive wherever and whenever they want. From their windshield perspective, the city is a transportation problem to be solved for cars. Ultimately, the biggest hurdle congestion pricing faced was the simple fact that the people required to enact the legislation were the ones who stood to pay the most because of it. You know that beleaguered middle class driver the Assembly kept talking about? He was a state legislator.

If any good has come of the Assembly's failure to act on congestion pricing, it's simply this: A new generation of citizen activists got to see up close and personal how broken New York State government is and how badly it's in need of fixing. Assembly members come up for election every two years and are often ushered in to office by as few as 5,000 votes. September 2008 ought to be the last time any of these legislators have the pleasure of seeing only their own name on a Democratic primary ballot.

By Aaron Naparstek. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Transportation Alternatives.  

Hakeem Jeffries was, of course, in the perfect position to negotiate G train service enhancements during the congestion pricing debate a couple of months back. Instead, the Assemblyman who oversees Flatbush Avenue, the traffic-choked on-ramp to the free Manhattan Bridge, aligned himself with legislators from Westchester, south Brooklyn and eastern Queens against congestion pricing:

Speaking on behalf of a district where 70 percent of households do not own a car, where only 2.2 percent of daily commuters drive alone to work in the pricing zone, where the households that do own a vehicle earn nearly twice as much as the ones that don't, Jeffries said that he opposes congestion pricing because, among other reasons, "it's unfair to working families."

Thanks, in part, to Jeffries and his State Assembly colleagues' refusal to hold a debate or take a vote on New York City's congestion pricing plan, the MTA is staring at a $17.5 billion deficit in its $29 billion capital plan and service increases are about as unlikely as ever. "Save the G" advocates need to hold Jeffries accountable.

Here, by the way, are some of the other improvements that working families (and everyone else) in Jeffries' district lost when he and his colleagues shot down congestion pricing:

• Flatbush Avenue's B41 was number one on the list of bus routes that would have seen increased service using the $354.5 million federal grant.
• Brooklyn's first-ever Bus Rapid Transit route, one of five routes citywide, was (and still is) slated to run through Jeffries' district, along Bedford and Nostrand Avenues. That project would have been paid for by congestion pricing money too.
• The Department of Transportation was looking at parts of Jeffries' district for a possible residential parking permit program to help protect neighborhoods from park-and-ride commuters.

With the midnight deadline to receive $354 million in federal aid approaching in a matter of hours, now is the last chance to call your representatives in Albany to express your support, no matter where they may stand on the issue. And don't forget, when you call you can have these handy fact sheets at your disposal.

As we learned from reader reports last week, several representatives who seem to be leaning against pricing in the press are in fact uncommitted. Your phone calls today will make a difference.

Every state legislator should hear as often as possible from pricing supporters, but here are a few that Streetsbloggers have identified as fence-sitters, and what our readers heard when they called.

Hakeem Jeffries. Despite signals that he does not favor pricing, the Brooklyn Assemblyman has yet to decide how he will vote:

• "i finally got an email back from Jeffries... in his email he said he was still "keeping an open mind" but that his colleagues in the assembly still had concerns that had to be addressed."

Brooklyn Assemblywoman Joan Millman:

• "Assemblywoman Millman supports the concept of congestion pricing, but is hung up on getting assurances from the mayor about the lock box, transit improvements, and handicap access to subway stations."

Upper West Side Assemblyman Danny O'Donnell:

• "I called O'Donnell's office. The staffer on the phone said he "supports the goals" of CP but "has many questions." I gave my spiel on why we need CP."

Lower Manhattan Assemblywoman Deborah Glick:

• "Called Glick’s office. Was told repeatedly that Glick does not have a position on this issue which is bizarre because all of lower Manhattan would benefit from the reduction of trucks heading over the bridges and into the Holland tunnel."
  

Queens Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan:

• "I spoke to a staff member in Catherine Nolan's office. She said Nolan currently has no opinion."

Take Hakeem Jeffries. The Brooklyn assemblyman reportedly has no position on pricing at the moment, but not so long ago he stood with Richard Brodsky in support of the Westchester pricing foe's $6.50 taxi drop charge "alternative."

In addition to system-wide and Brooklyn-specific improvements, here is just some of what residents of Jeffries' district stand to lose without pricing:

• 33 new buses on the B41 line
• Structural overcoating on the B and Q lines between Prospect Park and Sheepshead Bay
• Upgrade of the PA systems in the Bedford-Nostrand, Classon, Clinton-Washington and Fulton Street stations on the G line
• Flooding improvements for the Crosstown Line
• An 8.1% to 22.1% percent reduction in traffic jams

Check your district fact sheets to see what's on the block in your neighborhood. And if you haven't called your reps already, now is the time to pass this information on.

Silver, who has not voiced a public position on the issue, said the meetings will continue today, and he refused to declare the plan dead.

Meanwhile, Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco has proposed that pricing be attached to the budget, the Daily Politics reports, which would make it tougher to vote down. But on this count, Silver's position is already well-known.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver reportedly is vehemently opposed to including congestion pricing in the budget, and has said he doesn't want to deal with this issue at all until after the budget is passed.

After the jump, a collection of quotes from lawmakers following last night's meeting.

From the Times:

“I think it’s going down,” said Anthony S. Seminerio, an assemblyman from Queens. “There are too many unanswered questions.”

“This is Albany, and nothing is dead until it’s dead, dead,” said Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, who represents the Upper West Side and opposes the mayor’s plan. Still, he said, “It doesn’t look good.”

“The Assembly won’t let the mayor and Senator Bruno force this into the budget,” said Micah Kellner, a Democratic Assemblyman from the Upper East Side who supports congestion pricing. “The Assembly is going to stand firm on this.”

From the Post:

"Congestion pricing is not dead but it's on life support," said Assemblyman opponent Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn). "[It] will require substantial amendments in order to revive it and even that may not be enough."

Assemblyman Michael Benjamin (D-Bronx), another opponent of the toll system -- which is already operating in London -- fumed: "The last good idea to come from Britain was radar!"

"It's a good plan," said Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV (D-Manhattan), one of the few local supporters who spoke. "Anything that reduces vehicle traffic and increases mass transit is a good thing. Driving into Manhattan is a privilege, not a right."

From New York 1:

"It’s just a bad approach where working class citizens of the city of New York are going to wind up having to pay either $8 or eventually a fare increase,” said Assembly member Ruben Diaz, Jr. 

"It’s our obligation to help the city and help our neighborhood to obtain the funds necessary to improve our system,” said Assembly member Carmen Arroyo.

"There are some problems in the bill. I think that would need to get addressed before I could consider voting for it," said Assemblymember Danny O'Donnell. 

The New York League of Conservation Voters announced earlier this month that it is forming a new political action committee called Climate Action PAC. Sitting at the top of the PAC's legislative agenda: getting congestion pricing passed.

When it comes to climate impact, said NYLCV spokesman Dan Hendrick, "congestion pricing is the most sweeping proposal on the table; it's head and shoulders above the rest of what's out there." The Climate Action PAC will spend about $300,000 on elections this fall (you can donate online), to be divvied up among six races for seats in the state Legislature, Hendrick projects. Pricing votes will also be the number one factor that NYLCV considers in making its next round of endorsements for state legislators and City Council members.

"We've signaled that this congestion pricing legislation could give us a quantum leap in terms of improved mass transit and cleaner air," said Hendrick. "We're not only going to weigh this heavily when making endorsements, but how people vote on congestion pricing will weigh very heavily in how we use the PAC money."

While funding challengers is riskier than supporting incumbents, threatening pricing foes and undecideds with the stick of a well-funded opponent could have a more immediate impact on the vote at hand. The PAC is still weighing its options on this point. Asked whether candidates who challenge anti-pricing incumbents would be targeted for PAC funds, Hendrick said, "We would definitely consider that."

NYLCV also rates council members on an environmental scorecard. Council members' pricing votes will go a long way towards determining whether they receive a positive score heading into 2009 city elections. "We're gonna give a lot of extra weight to congestion pricing [in the next scorecard]," said Hendrick. "You're going to have a significantly lower score if you vote against it."

A quick glance at NYLCV's 2006 scorecard [PDF] indicates that several Council members who currently enjoy positive ratings may see their scores drop. The following Council members all had 2005-2006 scores of 63 percent or higher, but have indicated that they are undecided or opposed to pricing: Bill de Blasio, Alan Gerson, Jessica Lappin, James Gennaro, Eric Gioia, Peter Vallone, David Weprin, Thomas White, Charles Barron, Lew Fidler, Vincent Gentile, Dominic Recchia and Michael McMahon.

While all of the above, with the exception of Lappin and White, will be term-limited out of the council come 2009, de Blasio and Barron are running for Brooklyn Borough President, and Vallone is leaning towards running for Queens Borough President. Weprin is campaigning for Comptroller, and Gioia is running for Public Advocate having promised to manage a carbon-neutral campaign. Gennaro, meanwhile, chairs the Council's committee on environmental protection.

NYLCV has operated a PAC for 15 years, but the newly unveiled Climate Action PAC has more resources at its disposal than its previous incarnation. Last year the NYLCV PAC spent $110,000, helping three candidates for municipal office (in Brookhaven, Schenectady, and Yonkers) attain victory.

After the vote on congestion pricing has been settled, urban issues will continue to be a focus of the PAC. "The whole thing about global warming is that it's redefined what pollution is," said Hendrick. "The connection between transit and the environment is much more obvious to people now."

About 60 people came to Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights and weighed in on the five options presented in the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission's interim report. It quickly became clear that the evening was really a referendum on the two pricing proposals in the report; none of the other options were viewed as viable. By the time it was over, half the audience had testified before commission members Elizabeth Yeampierre, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, and Gene Russianoff. (Richard Brodsky, who came to the Brooklyn hearing instead of the one closest to his Westchester district, left before it ended and missed several pieces of testimony.)

Most encouraging for pricing advocates: Several residents without any group affiliation testified, expressing a unanimous desire for better transit, cleaner air, and safer streets. Congestion pricing, they said, was the surest means to achieve those objectives. (Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives emailed us to report that pro-pricing speakers out-numbered anti- in the Bronx and Queens as well.)

But first the elected officials spoke, leading off with Congressman Anthony Weiner. In his allotted four minutes, he repeated the canard that congestion pricing is a conservative ploy to enact a "radical change and reduction in the amount of [federal] transit funding we receive." Then Council Member Lew Fidler and Assemblymen Hakeem Jeffries, Vito Lopez, Alan Maisel, and Alec Brook-Krasny each took a turn to bash both pricing proposals (their most common refrain: "too Manhattan-centric").

The one semi-exception among electeds was Council Member Tish James...

who skipped the meeting but had an aide read a statement that in order to curb asthma rates, "residential parking permits are an absolute necessity" for any areas immediately outside the congestion zone. Many of the community board reps and neighborhood association members who followed echoed that argument, offering support if a permit plan was attached to pricing, because they feared a park-and-ride spillover effect.

The non-profits in attendance came out strongly in favor of the commission's alternative pricing plan (which would raise more money at a lower cost than the Mayor's plan), countering the assertions of previous speakers with hard numbers. Here's a snippet delivered by Wiley Norvell of TA:

Congestion pricing will benefit the entire city, not just Manhattan. Nearly three-quarters of the congestion reduction from pricing will take place outside Manhattan. 40% of traffic in the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn is from Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge-bound motorists avoiding the Battery Tunnel toll. Congestion pricing, by equalizing tolls, will cut congestion and finally give traffic relief to neighborhoods adjacent to the free bridges. It is estimated that pricing will reduce traffic by 29% in Downtown Brooklyn and by 24% in North Brooklyn. That is staggering.

Personal note: While the pricing advocates were testifying, I was in a politician sandwich, sitting between two pairs of electeds, and could overhear their snickering and backslapping.

When the "ordinary people" got their chance to speak, they also endorsed the alternative pricing plan by a wide margin. The politicians had already left at that point, a fact that wasn't lost on Sunset Park resident Kay Young. "I have to note the seeming disconnect between our elected officials and everyone else," he said.

They haven't done their homework. They cite no statistics, just general specters. The fact that they left is unbelievable. They didn't even stay to listen to their constituents.