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Governor Andrew Cuomo "eviscerated" the transit lockbox bill last night, according to the office of bill sponsor James Brennan. The governor doesn't want New Yorkers to know when the state steals from the MTA. Michael Nagle/Getty Images via Times Union

Governor Andrew Cuomo and the leadership of the state legislature added insult to injury last night, neutering the transit lockbox bill even after they put hundreds of millions in dedicated transit revenue at risk. While lockbox language did make it into the omnibus legislation passed last night, the governor’s office stripped out the meaningful provisions and added a giant loophole.

“It’s eviscerating our bill,” said Lorrie Smith, legislative director for Assembly Member James Brennan, the lockbox’s sponsor along with State Senator Marty Golden. “It completely removes the impact statement requirement and it allows the governor to declare an emergency and take whatever money he wants subject to legislative removal, which is what we have now.”

Since no law short of a constitutional amendment could completely stop future legislatures from raiding the MTA’s dedicated funds, the most important provision in the lockbox bill required the creation of a “diversion impact statement” whenever a raid was commenced. The statement would have clearly detailed how much was stolen from transit riders and estimated the impact on transit riders’ fares and service. That sunshine provision — which ought to have been a favorite of a governor who campaigned on transparency — was stripped out last night.

Smith said that Brennan, the bill’s sponsor, was surprised to find the bill destroyed. He only saw the language yesterday afternoon, she said, hours before the bill was passed.

What motivated the last-minute changes? “This is what the governor negotiated,” Smith said. “We really don’t know.”

Smith promised that Brennan would reintroduce his bill in its full form next year. Read more…

Assembly Member James Brennan has abandoned the idea of implementing additional parking minimums at Atlantic Yards. That plan would have led more people to drive to the arena while failing to keep on-street spaces open for area residents.

Wrote Brennan in an email to Streetsblog:

I understand the concerns raised about my idea of compelling Ratner to provide off-street parking. I agree completely that the correct policy is not to encourage automobiles coming to the area, so I am dropping any notion of initiating legislation on this subject. You should know that my intention was not to increase parking, but to compensate for the fact that the Empire State Development Corporation eliminated Ratner’s obligation to provide 2300 units of underground parking at the arena as part of the deal to delay completion of the project until 2035. My focus next session will be to find incentives for mass transit.

That’s encouraging news. Atlantic Yards is going up at the site of Brooklyn’s biggest transit hub — precisely the space not to induce more auto trips with government-mandated parking. It’s good to see Brennan on board with efforts to ensure that as many people as possible take the subway, the bus or the Long Island Railroad to get there.

Could the state legislature get in on the costly, congestion-inducing parking minimum game? And could they do it at the site of Brooklyn’s biggest transit hub? Under a proposal by Assembly Member James Brennan, that’s exactly what would happen.

Assembly Member James Brennan wants the state government to force more parking into Atlantic Yards. Image: NYS Assembly.

Brennan is working on legislation that would force Forest City Ratner to build more off-street parking at the Atlantic Yards site, as was first reported in the Park Slope Patch. Currently, an 1,100 parking space surface lot is slated for the site.

Tonice Sgrignoli, a legislative aide for Brennan, said the legislation is still being researched and no details are available at this point. According to Sgrignoli, ESDC eliminated a requirement to build underground off-street parking that had been in an earlier agreement with Forest City Ratner and this legislation would likely undo that change.

When Streetsblog asked why Brennan thought that Atlantic Yards should have more parking in the first place, Sgrignoli replied that “Anyone who’s ever tried to drive a car and park it in that area will understand why it’s important to provide parking.”

Hopefully, Brennan himself has a more sophisticated understanding of parking policy. As former Boerum Hill Association president Jo Ann Simon said, no conceivable amount of off-street parking is going to free up on-street spaces so long as they are cheaper than going to a garage and available to anybody. “If people drive there, they will always try and find something free on the street,” she said. What happens on-street — many in the area, including Simon, have long pushed for residential parking permits — Simon said, “is entirely irrelevant to whether there should be more off-street parking to serve the arena.”

Simon’s argument is borne out by the reality at Yankee Stadium. There, despite a whopping 9,000 off-street spaces, area residents still complain that on-street parking is impossible on game day, according to a Crain’s report.

Moreover, building extra parking will simply mean that more people are able to drive to the area instead. “Brennan’s proposal to compel more off-street parking in one of New York City’s most transit-accessible locations betrays a terrible lack of understanding regarding transportation and mobility,” said University of Pennsylvania parking expert Rachel Weinberger. “His idea will invite more traffic through his district, more traffic in adjoining districts, and by requiring all of that parking, other development is preempted.”

Agreed Simon, “You induce drivers if there is parking there.”

Steven Higashide of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which has analyzed the plans for Atlantic Yards and is a member of the Brooklyn Speaks coalition, said that underground parking had been a part of the Atlantic Yards plans, but was removed when the amount of development planned was scaled back.

“The only way Atlantic Yards can become part of a vibrant urban fabric is if the city and developer work to reduce driving to the site,” said Higashide. “Providing hundreds or thousands of extra parking spaces won’t do that.”

Though the state legislature was expected to work well into the morning last night, dealing with major priorities like rent regulation and gay marriage in addition to lower-profile but still-important bills like the transit funding lockbox, the negotiated deals fell apart and the legislature put off all its business until this morning. The path to passage for any of those bills is a little less obvious than it was a day ago, but the lockbox still has a good chance of making it through the State Assembly.

The lockbox already passed the State Senate, where it was sponsored by Brooklyn Republican Marty Golden, and the powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced his support for the bill last night.

The bill should be on the Ways and Means Committee agenda this morning, said Lorrie Smith, the legislative director for lockbox sponsor James Brennan. “If Silver’s supporting it, then it should be on that agenda,” said Smith. The Ways and Means agenda has not been released yet, however. “We’re in kind of a holding pattern since late last evening,” Smith said.

There is still room on the calendar to pass the lockbox, said Smith, even as the time remaining in the session continues to tick away. If Assembly Republicans do decide to delay the bill with a fight over the payroll tax, as Silver’s office was worried about last night, however, that could complicate matters. “If that were to come about, it would be a problem,” admitted Smith.

“We have to hope that Senator Golden will ask them to let this go through,” said Smith. Streetsblog has a call in with Golden’s office to see if he’s communicated the importance of the lockbox legislation to his Republican colleagues in the Assembly.

Assembly Member Jim Brennan makes the case for protecting dedicated transit funds from raids. Senator Marty Golden stands behind him to the left and TWU Local 100 President John Samuelson is on the far right. Photo: Noah Kazis

Momentum is growing in the push to protect dedicated MTA funds from Albany’s predations, but with only one month left in the legislative session, time is ticking. Assembly Member Jim Brennan and Senator Marty Golden, the bipartisan sponsors of the transit funding lockbox bill, stood today with a broad coalition of transit advocates in the Times Square subway station to make a final push for their legislation.

Since 2009, Albany has stolen $260 million in dedicated funds from the MTA in order to patch up the state’s budget. The theft of those funds worsened an already bad fiscal situation for the transit authority, leading to devastating service cuts and fare hikes.

In order to keep Albany from continuing to use public transit as its piggy bank, Brennan and Golden introduced legislation that would make it more difficult for the state to divert dedicated funds. First, it would forbid the governor from including dedicated transit funds in “blanket sweeps.” In recent years, however, only $1.3 million of the $260 million stolen from transit were taken using this mechanism.

To completely prevent the legislative sweeps that have made up the rest of the raids on transit, it would be necessary to pass a constitutional amendment. Brennan and Golden’s bill aims to raise the political cost of stealing from transit by introducing a set of disclosure requirements.

For the legislature to steal dedicated transit funds, they would be required to pass a “diversion impact statement” outlining how much was being raided from each mass transit fund, how much had been raided over the past five years, and an estimate of what those raids would cost in terms of service, maintenance and security. These important sunshine measures hadn’t been included in an earlier draft of the legislation, but were a top priority for transit advocates and added later.

Read more…

Assembly Member Jim Brennan (inset) favors redesigning Prospect Park West to make this activity illegal or too dangerous to undertake. Photo: Planetgordon/Flickr

After Assembly Member James Brennan released the results of his telephone survey on the Prospect Park West bike lane last Friday, the assessment in the press was unanimous. WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein headlined her post on the poll results “They Like It. They Really Like It.” Gersh Kuntzman at The Brooklyn Paper began his story: “The survey says — again! — that Park Slopers like their controversial bike lane.”

The topline numbers in the Brennan poll — 44 percent for keeping the lane as is, 25 percent for making adjustments, and 28 percent for eliminating it — closely resembled the results of the web survey conducted by Brad Lander, Steve Levin, and Community Board 6 last year, which found that 49 percent of Park Slope residents wanted to keep the lane, 22 wanted to keep it and make adjustments, and 29 percent wanted to get rid of it.

Even the New York Post’s Sally Goldenberg, author of the most gratuitous anti-bike bile of 2011, led her Brennan poll story by noting that the bike lane “is a hit among Brooklyn residents in neighboring areas, a new survey shows.”

About the only person who didn’t read Jim Brennan’s poll as an endorsement of the bike lane is Jim Brennan. (If we’re also counting people who are obligated to oppose the bike lane, you can add Gibson Dunn attorney Jim Walden, the lawyer suing the city to remove it, to the list. So that makes two people.)

Earlier this week, Brennan’s office sent around a presentation [PDF], compiled for his office by the polling firm Kiley & Company, which includes the following header summarizing opinion on what should happen next: “After Hearing Arguments on Both Sides, Narrow Majority Favors Changing or Eliminating New Bike Lane.” You can only get to that narrow majority if you group the 25 percent who agreed with the idea of “altering it to address pedestrian and driver concerns” together with the 28 percent who actually want to remove the lane.

You could also say that a huge majority want to keep the lane or adjust it — the 44 percent who said the lane should stay as is, plus those 25 percent who like alterations. Unlike the Lander/Levin/CB 6 survey, Brennan’s poll didn’t suggest specific alterations to the design, so we don’t know what those 25 percent are really thinking. (Note: This didn’t stop the Brooklyn Paper from reprinting Brennan’s poll interpretation today.)

Despite the fact that his own survey found a substantial margin of support for the PPW redesign, Brennan’s office has been trying to portray those results as a reason to eliminate the bike lane ever since making the poll responses public.

Read more…

Assembly Member Jim Brennan’s office released the results of a telephone survey on the Prospect Park West redesign this afternoon [PDF], and the topline numbers echo the results of the web survey conducted last year by Council Members Brad Lander and Steve Levin and Community Board 6.

Brennan's poll adds to the public opinion research showing a clear preference for the Prospect Park West redesign over the old configuration.

By an overall margin of 48 percent to 32 percent, more people feel the redesign has improved the street than made it worse. A similar margin prefer to keep the redesign than to get rid of it — 44 percent to 28 percent, with 25 percent choosing the option of “altering it to respond to pedestrian and driver concerns.” (In response to concerns, DOT has proposed narrowing the bike buffer near Grand Army Plaza and installing raised pedestrian refuges and bike “rumble strips” at intersections, a plan that cleared two CB 6 committees unanimously last month.)

Last fall’s Lander/Levin/CB 6 survey found very similar results among a non-random sample of 1,800 Park Slope residents, with 49 percent saying the redesign should be kept as is, 29 percent preferring to revert to the old design, and 22 percent saying the new configuration should be kept with changes.

Brennan’s poll, conducted by the firm Kiley & Company, surveyed 500 voters in Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, and Kensington. The sample was collected by randomly calling from a list of 25,000 voters. Compared to the overall population of Brennan’s district, however, the sample seems to favor car owners — 66 percent of the respondents said they own or have use of a car that they drive regularly in Brooklyn, but only 49 percent of households in Brennan’s district own cars, according to Census data gathered from 2005 to 2009.

The difference is significant, because among regular car users in Brennan’s poll, 40 percent said the redesign has made the street worse, compared to 32 percent of the overall sample. The overall support for the redesign would probably have been higher than 48 percent if the sample had accurately reflected the area’s car ownership rates.

Despite the positive topline numbers, Brennan is still not taking a position on the redesign. Citing a few specific survey results, like the 42 percent of older respondents who reported feeling less safe crossing the bike lane, the Assembly member said in a statement that he is “reluctant to endorse the bike lane as is.”

The poll appears to be the same survey that Streetsblog readers reported receiving earlier this week. Kiley & Company may have used Quantel Research, the firm surveyors identified themselves as working for, as a sub-vendor.

New legislation wouldn't be able to ban transit raids, but could raise the political cost for Albany lawmakers looking to steal from transit riders. Graphic: Carly Clark/Streetsblog

Since 2009, Albany has stolen roughly $260 million dollars from dedicated transit funds in an attempt to plug the state government’s enormous deficits. Those cuts have wreaked havoc upon the MTA’s budget, precipitating major service cuts and fare hikes.

Now, however, some legislators are trying to help put an end to those raids. A new bill introduced by Assm. Jim Brennan and Sen. Marty Golden won’t be able to put a stop to the raids directly, but it has the potential to make a statement in support of protecting transit riders and educate their fellow legislators.

“Unfortunately, New York has a history of raiding the MTA’s funds,” said Brennan in a prepared statement. “This bill requires that funds raised by taxes for the express purpose of funding the MTA or its subsidiaries be used for their intended purpose. By retaining these funds for the system, we stabilize fares and protect funding for the system’s operation.”

The Brennan/Golden bill would make it slightly harder for the executive branch to raid transit funds. For two years following a fare increase, the bill would forbid the state Division of the Budget from including dedicated transit funds in the “blanket sweeps” it is currently allowed to perform. However, while blanket sweeps have raided hundreds of millions of dollars statewide from dedicated funds in recent years, according to a report from the state comptroller [PDF], only a small fraction of the sweeps have affected transit funding.

The sole transit funding taken using blanket sweeps since 2009 was $1.3 million in aid to the LIRR and Metro-North. The rest of the $260 million in transit raids were done through legislative action, and there’s no way short of a constitutional amendment to prevent transit raids from being included in future laws.

Read more…

The MTA will not lose another $170 million in budget negotiations, according to the office of Jim Brennan, who chairs the Assembly’s authorities committee.

As we reported yesterday, two open issues in budget negotiations threatened $170 million in funds for the MTA. The Senate Republicans were trying to exempt schools from the payroll mobility tax, which would have cost the MTA $70 million, and the Assembly was opposed to a Cuomo plan to shift $100 million in Assembly discretionary funds to the MTA.

According to Brennan’s legislative director, Lorrie Smith, the Assembly remains opposed to having its money be used for the MTA, but will find another source for that $100 million. “The MTA is not going to lose that money,” she said. “Mr. Brennan’s main goal here is to protect the MTA’s budget.” It is not clear, however, what the alternative source for that $100 million will be.

Smith also told us that the payroll tax exemption was not going to make it into any final budget. “The payroll tax, as I understand it, is off the table,” said Smith, “because the Assembly is adamantly opposed to it.” According to the leaked memo we reported on yesterday, the Cuomo administration is also opposed to cutting back the payroll tax in this budget.

Finally, Smith revealed that a third transit issue is keeping the transportation section of the budget from being completed: Long Island Bus, which recently cut more than half of its lines. “This is an issue that is being decided some place above us,” said Smith, who knew only that negotiations were ongoing.

We have calls in with the governor and Senate Transportation Committee chair Charles Fuschillo’s offices to confirm that these issues are indeed off the negotiating table.

Andrew Cuomo's staff hasn't spoken to MTA executives about the authority's looming capital funding shortfall, according to MTA chair Jay Walder. Photo: Wikimedia

The MTA is still staring down a $10 billion hole in its capital plan, and the consequences of that deficit continue to roll closer. Unless money is found by the end of the year, transit expansions like the Second Avenue Subway will slow down and important maintenance will be left undone. But despite the approaching deadline, no one in Albany seems willing to step up and even begin to tackle the issue.

Governor Cuomo hasn’t shown much interest in dealing with the MTA’s capital deficit. During a legislative hearing on the transportation budget yesterday, MTA Chairman Jay Walder revealed that while he has met with the governor’s staff, “I have not had conversations as to avenues of funding for the capital program.”

Any new revenue source for the MTA would be a major political fight. If the governor’s office hasn’t even started speaking with the MTA about the issue, movement in the near future seems unlikely.

While the governor seems to be whistling past the graveyard, the State Senate continues to actively fight to take money away from transit. The $1.4 billion payroll mobility tax remains under threat, with Majority Leader Dean Skelos strenuously opposed, a number of Senate Republicans elected on anti-payroll tax platforms and the four breakaway Senate Democrats willing to axe the tax as well.

In a speech at a Crain’s Breakfast Forum two weeks ago, Skelos once again expressed his desire to eliminate the payroll tax, though he now says that the MTA should be “made whole” if that revenue is removed. That’s progress for Skelos, but it’s not enough. Whatever revenue would be used to replace $1.4 billion from the payroll tax is revenue that can’t be used to fund the capital plan. As Walder told the legislature yesterday, “I don’t foresee a plan in any time frame in which you can phase out the payroll tax.”

Read more…