April 8, 2008
$8 Traffic Fee for Manhattan Gets Nowhere
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

ALBANY — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s far-reaching plan to ease traffic in Manhattan died here on Monday in a closed conference room on the third floor of the Capitol.

Democratic members of the State Assembly held one final meeting to debate the merits of Mr. Bloomberg’s plan and found overwhelming and persistent opposition. The plan would have charged drivers $8 to enter a congestion zone in Manhattan south of 60th Street during peak hours.

Mr. Bloomberg and his supporters, including civic, labor and environmental organizations, viewed the proposal as a bold and essential step to help manage the city’s inexorable growth.

But the mayor’s plan was strongly opposed by a broad array of politicians from Queens, Brooklyn and New York’s suburbs, who viewed the proposed congestion fee as a regressive measure that overwhelmingly benefited affluent Manhattanites.

“The congestion pricing bill did not have anywhere near a majority of the Democratic conference, and will not be on the floor of the Assembly,” Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, said after the meeting.

The plan’s collapse was a severe blow to Mr. Bloomberg’s environmental agenda and political legacy. The mayor introduced his plan a year ago as the signature proposal of a 127-item program for sustainable city growth that helped raise his national profile. Without approval from Albany, the city now stands to lose about $354 million worth of federal money that would have financed the system for collecting the fee and helped to pay for new bus routes and other traffic mitigation measures.

After Mr. Silver announced the plan’s demise, a statement was released by Mary E. Peters, the federal transportation secretary, indicating that her department would now seek to distribute those funds to traffic-fighting proposals in other cities.

New York also hoped to use revenues from congestion pricing to finance billions of dollars in subway expansion and other improvements by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, money that must now come from somewhere else.

Assemblyman Mark S. Weprin, a Queens Democrat, said that in discussing the issue with his colleagues, “the word ‘elitist’ came up a number of times.” His constituents, Mr. Weprin said, almost uniformly opposed the measure, viewing it as a tax on their ability to move around their own city.

Mr. Weprin estimated that opinion among Assembly Democrats ran four to one against the plan. No formal vote was taken at the closed meeting.

Prospects for the bill returning any time soon appear dim.

It was the latest defeat for Mr. Bloomberg from Albany, which in 2005 dashed the mayor’s dreams of building a football stadium on the West Side and bringing the 2012 Olympics to New York.

The mayor has appeared increasingly frustrated with the situation in Albany in recent days and did not appear publicly after the measure’s defeat. He released an angry statement shortly after the rejection.

“It takes a special type of cowardice for elected officials to refuse to stand up and vote their conscience on an issue that has been debated, and amended significantly to resolve many outstanding issues, for more than a year,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Every New Yorker has a right to know if the person they send to Albany was for or against better transit and cleaner air.”

But even in the Republican-controlled State Senate, the plan did not receive much consideration. Out of deference to Mr. Bloomberg, who has been an ally and financial patron of Senate Republicans, the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, pushed for a floor vote on the legislation Monday afternoon. But Senate Democrats refused to take the floor, forestalling any vote.

That move followed a year’s worth of cajoling and brinkmanship between opponents and supporters of the plan, which evolved significantly — but, it turned out, not significantly enough — from the version Mr. Bloomberg proposed last April.

Supporters ultimately agreed to shrink the zone in which the fees would apply, to the area south of 60th Street in Manhattan, instead of south of 86th Street. They also added a small charge on taxicab and limousine trips through the zone, as well as a tax credit for low-income residents.

But many issues remained unresolved. Critics also objected to the elimination of a sunset provision, which would have required the plan to win approval again after three years. City officials said that such a provision would have precluded long-term bond financing for capital improvement projects.

Mr. Silver, a frequent antagonist of Mr. Bloomberg’s who in 2005 blocked the mayor’s plan to redevelop the West Side railyards, pre-empted criticism that he was personally to blame for the plan’s defeat, saying that he favored some kind of congestion proposal but that the mayor’s plan simply lacked enough support to pass. “Let me be clear: If I were making the decision alone, I might have made a different decision,” Mr. Silver said.

Ultimately, the battle lines over the plan remained almost unchanged during the yearlong debate over the project, despite multiple rounds of public hearings, reams of studies and an aggressive lobbying campaign by Mr. Bloomberg and his allies. Indeed, many opponents said they resented the pressure and threats that they said emanated from Mr. Bloomberg’s side, including hints that the mayor would back primary candidates to run against politicians who opposed congestion pricing.

The mayor’s allies recently formed a political action committee to finance those campaigns.

Those efforts, supporters and opponents agreed, illustrated the gulf between Mr. Bloomberg and lawmakers in Albany, where the mayor sometimes seemed to miscalculate how far his power and prestige could carry him.

Many Democrats in the Legislature felt that the mayor’s demeanor in private meetings was condescending. Some opponents wondered at Mr. Bloomberg’s political strategy, noting that they hardly expected to be punished by their constituents for siding with them.

“I’d be very happy running for re-election letting everybody know that I was an advocate against congestion pricing,” said Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman, a Queens Democrat.

Ultimately, some supporters said privately, the same qualities that liberated Mr. Bloomberg to propose such a far-reaching plan — his independence from established power-brokers and detachment from traditional politicking — are what doomed the plan to failure.

“It doesn’t really work up here, and it didn’t help it at all,” said Assemblyman William F. Boyland, Jr., a Brooklyn Democrat who opposed the plan.

Some Assembly Democrats said that by Monday, even many of the supporters of the plan had significant reservations about it. Debate had veered from the issues of traffic and pollution, they said, to advocates emphasizing the need to finance badly needed mass transit projects. That further alienated suburban officials, whose constituents would have borne much of the cost of the fees but reaped little benefit from those projects.

Reporting was contributed by Diane Cardwell, Danny Hakim, Trymaine Lee and Jeremy W. Peters.

Bloomberg Tactics Were Highhanded on Traffic Plan, Lawmakers Say
By DIANE CARDWELL and DANNY HAKIM, NY TIMES, April 8, 2008

Last week, with a landmark proposal at a delicate juncture, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner raced to Albany as part of an all-out effort to persuade state lawmakers to approve a measure to charge drivers entering the busiest sections of Manhattan.

In Albany, the commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, expressed the mayor’s sentiments, saying: “You are either for this historic change in New York or you’re against it. And if you’re against it, you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

Ms. Sadik-Khan’s remarks were widely noted by Albany lawmakers, with some viewing her tone as condescending. So when it was revealed that the state police had pulled her over for speeding and improperly using her lights and sirens on her way to the Capitol, it only underscored what the legislators saw as the Bloomberg administration’s imperious attitude.

“When Commissioner Sadik-Khan was coming up here telling me I can’t drive, she was busy being driven in a city-owned car by a chauffeur, speeding, getting a ticket with her lights and sirens on,” said Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat and an ardent foe of the program. The proposal was “rotten to the core,” said Mr. Dinowitz, who was handing out copies of a Daily News article about Ms. Sadik-Khan’s citations to fellow legislators.

Despite the intimate meals at Gracie Mansion, exhaustive lobbying, and presentations of sophisticated, district-by-district traffic analyses, Mr. Bloomberg was unable to persuade lawmakers like Mr. Dinowitz to support his plan, which would have formed a major pillar in his legacy. Indeed, Ms. Sadik-Khan’s stumble was but one of many missteps that state lawmakers said had led to the program’s demise, and something of a replay of events last July, when Mr. Bloomberg previously failed to persuade lawmakers to approve the proposal to charge drivers $8 to enter a designated zone in Manhattan.

Given the New York City Council’s limited powers, and its habit of deferring to the mayor, Mr. Bloomberg has sometimes found himself at a loss for how to persuade a resistant State Legislature to embrace his plans.

“All politics is relationships, and if he hasn’t built the relationships over time he can’t suddenly create those relationships with 48 hours to go in the process,” said Assemblyman Micah Z. Kellner, a Manhattan Democrat who supported the proposal but complained that Mr. Bloomberg treated lawmakers like an afterthought. “It just shows that six and a half years into his term, the mayor just does not know how to approach the Legislature.”

Indeed, several lawmakers, already offended by what they saw as the mayor’s past highhandedness, said that the hardball tactics employed by Mr. Bloomberg and his surrogates simply made a bad situation worse. In recent weeks, for instance, the League of Conservation Voters announced the creation of a political action committee positioned to work against lawmakers who did not support the plan.

Mr. Bloomberg is close to the organization, and Kevin Sheekey, his chief political deputy, spoke at a party celebrating the establishment of the committee, called the Climate Action PAC. Both men have hinted that opponents of congestion pricing would face rejection by voters in the fall elections.

“If there are people out there who aren’t helping New York City, I suppose they should fear,” Mr. Sheekey said on Monday, just hours before the Assembly rejected the measure in a closed door meeting. “It’s not the mayor they should worry about.”

But the threatening tone did not sit well with state lawmakers. “I imagine that’s how one becomes a multibillionaire, by being a strong-arm individual,” said Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow, a Westchester Democrat who opposed the plan. “He’s not going to push us around, though. We are the immovable body at this point.”

But some supporters of the plan said that the mayor faced an almost insurmountable task, given the competing interests of the transit agencies and the unwillingness of Albany lawmakers to take a politically risky vote as they face re-election in the fall.

And Mr. Bloomberg’s aides privately grumbled that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver supported the plan but did not press his members to vote for it. With Mr. Silver and his staff refusing to meet with the mayor’s top aides in recent days, Jeff Kay, the director of the mayor’s office of operations, was left to circle the halls of the Capitol distributing a list of 15 changes Mr. Bloomberg had agreed to make to the program to satisfy critics.

The defeat of the program, which was to be the catalyst for major transit and environmental improvements, is a crushing blow for Mr. Bloomberg, and threatens to leave him with little legacy beyond ending indoor smoking.

Lawmakers cited a number of reasons the mayor’s political strategy failed. The problems started when he rolled out the plan relatively late in the legislative session last year and then had a testy meeting with Senate Democrats that poisoned relations.

Democratic lawmakers were further annoyed earlier this year, when word leaked out that the mayor had cut a $500,000 check to the Senate Republicans to help them retain their majority. And even while the mayor was reaching out in a series of meetings and phone calls in recent weeks, his talk and that of his staff was at times threatening. “People don’t appreciate threats,” said Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, a Democrat from the Upper West Side, who said she would have voted for the plan.

“Members who might have been on the fence reacted negatively to the specter of a campaign from the mayor if they didn’t go along with his plan.”

Among the mayor’s other problems, he never seemed to find a vocal backer for the plan among the Assembly Democrats. Not only did he have to deal with Mr. Silver’s skepticism, but he had a vocal opponent, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester, fomenting opposition among the rank and file without an effective counterweight.

“There was no champion for congestion pricing within the Legislature,” said Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman, a Queens Democrat opposed to congestion pricing. “It was such an obvious transaction between the Senate Republican conference and the mayor. That’s not just a reflection of poor tactics on the mayor’s part, it’s a reflection of how little support the policy had on the merits.”

Trymaine Lee, William Neuman and Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

Bloomberg on Congestion Pricing Failure: 'A Special Kind of Cowardice'
Posted by Michael Clancy at 9:06 AM, April 8, 2008
LINK

STATEMENT BY MAYOR MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG ON THE FAILURE OF THE STATE LEGISLATURE TO VOTE CONGESTION PRICING:

“Today is a sad day for New Yorkers and a sad day for New York City. Not only won’t we see the realization of a plan that would have cut traffic, spurred our economy, reduced pollution and improved public health, we will also lose out on nearly $500 million annually for mass transit improvements and $354 million in immediate federal funds.

“I will be speaking with Secretary Peters and will express my thanks for her commitment to innovative solutions to real problems facing large cities today. I will also express my deep disappointment that, sadly, even Washington, which most Americans agree is completely dysfunctional, is more willing to try new approaches to longstanding problems than our elected officials in the State Assembly. It takes true leadership and courage to embrace new concepts and ideas and to be willing to try something. Unfortunately, both are lacking in the Assembly today.

“If that wasn’t shameful enough, it takes a special type of cowardice for elected officials to refuse to stand up and vote their conscience– on an issue that has been debated, and amended significantly to resolve many outstanding issues, for more than a year. Every New Yorker has a right to know if the person they send to Albany was for or against better transit and cleaner air. People know where I stood, and where members of the City Council stood. They deserved at least that from Albany."

Bloomberg continued:

“The idea for congestion pricing didn’t start in our Administration and it won’t end today. The $354 million we would have received from Washington tomorrow will go to another city in another state. But the problems congestion pricing could have helped solve are only going to get worse. And too many people from more than 170 environmental, labor, public health and business organizations recognize the merits of congestion pricing and hopefully someday, we will have more leaders in the Legislature who recognize it too.

“We will continue to push forward on the other 126 proposals in PlaNYC that will reduce our carbon footprint and green our City. We will move forward on proposals to plant 1 million trees, introduce hybrid taxis and install green roofs on City buildings. Congestion pricing is just one part of our ambitious agenda.

“I want to thank everyone who has worked tirelessly for congestion pricing and I want to acknowledge the courage and leadership that our partners in the City Council, Speaker Quinn, Governor Paterson, former Governor Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco and some in the Legislature have shown by working together to convince their colleagues to support congestion pricing. Together, we will continue to work to build a greener, greater New York City.”

Gov. David Paterson issued the following statement:

"Earlier today Congestion Pricing failed to achieve the consensus necessary to move forward on the state level. As I've said all along, this is an important program to reduce congestion and pollution in New York City while raising vitally needed funds for mass transit. Now we need to come up with innovative approaches to the challenge of funding mass transit. Over the next several days I will be working closely with my colleagues in the legislature and experts both in and outside of government to arrive at such solutions."

Bloomberg Administration, Council Speaker Quinn on Congestion Pricing's Defeat
Posted by Michael Clancy at 5:30 PM, April 7, 2008
LINK

John Gallagher, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, issued the following statement on the death of congestion pricing:

"What we are witnessing today is one of the biggest cop-outs in New York’s history. After insisting on the formation of a commission to make recommendations for a bill, and then for the City Council to vote to endorse that bill, the Assembly needs to stand up and be counted. They owe it to the majority of New Yorkers who support this plan, the scores of environmental groups, public health organizations, business leaders, unions, and the public at large, to put this proposal to a public vote.

Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn issued a statement also:
"I am disappointed that we missed an opportunity to make a significant investment in our mass transportation system, an investment that would have secured the long-term vitality of our city and improved the health of people living in our most congested neighborhoods.

In spite of this setback, the Council remains fully committed to environmental responsibility and to improving and expanding our mass transit system. We must now build new coalitions around forward-looking transportation policy that will improve public health and move people out of their cars and into buses, trains and ferries."


Congestion Pricing
NY TIMES

On April 22, 2007 -- Earth Day -- Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled the details of a plan to unsnarl Manhattan's streets through a congestion pricing plan.

Congestion pricing seeks to reduce traffic by increasing the cost of driving into the most popular and overcrowded areas. A number of cities across the globe, including Singapore, the pioneer, and London, have adopted congestion pricing, but the idea has never been tried in the United States.

As unveiled by Mr. Bloomberg, as part of a blueprint for the city's development over the next few decades, he proposed charging cars $8 to enter Manhattan south of 86th Street and $4 for trips within that zone. Those fees would go toward improvements in mass transit, along with $354 million in federal grants for mass transit improvements that the city would be eligible for if congestion pricing is approved.

The plan has stirred significant opposition, primarily from residents of the city's outer boroughs, who fear that the brunt of the charges would fall on them. Others have expressed worries that neighborhoods near transit hubs would be turned into parking lots, overrun by commuters avoiding the congestion fees.

The proposal also needed approval from Albany. Although it won the endorsement of then-Governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, his successor, David A. Paterson, and Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican leader of the state senate, its fate there was uncertain. In January 2008 a congestion pricing plan was approved by a 17-member state commission that would charge drivers with an E-ZPass $8 a day to enter Manhattan below 60th Street on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Those drivers would also receive a credit for bridge or tunnel tolls they paid on the same day. Drivers without an E-ZPass would pay $9 and would not receive credit for tolls.

On March 31, 2008, in a victory for Mayor Bloomberg, the City Council voted, 30 to 20, to urge the State Legislature to approve the plan.