Streetsblog New York City

Four New York City members of Congress joined the chairman of the MTA today to bluntly denounce the House GOP’s anti-transit transportation bill.

“It’s the worst piece of legislation you could ever imagine,” said MTA chief Joe Lhota, a Republican who served as the city’s budget director during the Giuliani administration.

“The worst transportation bill we have ever seen,” agreed Representative Jerry Nadler, a liberal Democrat.

Though the Republican proposal includes a number of other reasons for New Yorkers to hate it, such as eliminating the Safe Routes to School and Transportation Enhancements programs, which fund bicycle and pedestrian improvements, today’s presser focused on the attack on dedicated transit funding.

Currently, about 20 percent of federal gas tax revenues are devoted to transit, which provides the MTA $1 billion per year in dedicated capital funding. The transit agency gets another $400 million a year from the federal general fund. Under the Republican proposal, all transit funds would come from the general fund, where they’d have to compete with defense, health care and other spending priorities.

That $1 billion a year is absolutely necessary for the MTA to continue repairing the system and building expansions, and it could disappear entirely. Charlie Rangel, former chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which passed the anti-transit provision, said he asked influential House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan where the money to pay for transit would come from in the general fund. “The answer was they did not know at that time,” said Rangel.

The four Congress members in attendance did not mince words about the House bill. “Not even worth a warm bucket of asphalt,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney. Nadler said the bill exposed the attitude of the Republican Party toward transit riders: “You’re second class citizens. We don’t give a damn about you. Just disappear.”

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At the end of last week it appeared Mayor Bloomberg was on the verge of pulling it off. Having scored a congestion pricing bill in the state Senate, coaxed a cautious endorsement from the governor, and all but securing a near half-billion dollar pledge from Washington, Bloomberg sailed into Friday's state Assembly hearings on a wave of green apple-fueled adulation.

By most accounts, the mayor ran circles around his Albany inquisitors, as recounted in the Daily News:

Yesterday's Assembly hearing smacked of obfuscation and obstructionism. [Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver stacked the witness list with critics while failing to invite the MTA or any of the dozens of environmental and public health groups who back congestion pricing. The questions from lawmakers ranged from the skeptical to the outright hostile... But Bloomberg parried every thrust, and those testifying on the other side did their cause more harm than good.

And the Observer:

Mayor Bloomberg fought off the bridge-and-tunnel Assembly Members who showed up at this morning's hearing on congestion pricing, knocking down their objections one by one and dusting himself off afterward.

Them: It taxes the middle class. Him: No, it gives money to the transit system used by the working poor. Etc., etc.

Bloomberg even scheduled an unusual Sunday press conference to announce the enlistment of congressman and Queens Democratic Party chief Joseph Crowley, an unexpected ally the mayor described as "as influential in this as anybody can be."

Then Speaker Silver, a notable no-show last Friday, finally spoke:

We do all have a desire to do something positive about the environment, about preventing children from growing up with asthma. I'm not sure that this congestion pricing hits that, since many of the neighborhoods that have children with asthma are not within the congestion-pricing zone... Some of those areas will not benefit by the target of congestion pricing; in fact, some of those areas will become parking lots with people driving around the neighborhoods looking for parking spots in order to avoid congestion pricing fees.

There are people that have questions about putting a thousand cameras in the streets of Manhattan from a perspective of Big Brother watching you. And are there other ways you can do it as well? Are there other ways to achieve the goals? Will mass transit be ready to handle the overage? What's the significance of it? So these are all questions that hopefully good minds will get to work on answering and we'll have a comprehensive plan that makes sense.

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