Unions See Hochul’s Reversal on Congestion Pricing As a Big Win for New Yorkers
“Let’s be real,” Governor Kathy Hochul says, “a $15 charge may not mean a lot to someone who has the means—but it can break the budget of a working- or middle-class household.”
By Bob Hennelly
Did the elites just not get who actually runs New York City?
In a surprise reversal, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul has put the brakes on the MTA’s congestion pricing plan just a few weeks before it was scheduled to start on June 30. The announcement was made via a video announcement.
“Let’s be real: a $15 charge may not mean a lot to someone who has the means, but it can break the budget of a working- or middle-class household. It puts the squeeze on the very people who make this City go: the teachers, first responders, small business workers, bodega owners,” Hochul said. “And given these financial pressures, I cannot add another burden to working- and middle-class New Yorkers–or create another obstacle to continued recovery.”
Hochul reasoned that circumstances had “changed and we must respond to the facts on the ground—not from the rhetoric from five years ago,” also adding that “implementing the planned congestion pricing system risks too many unintended consequences for New Yorkers at this time.”
Most political commentators linked the last minute decision to pull the plug to political calculations that the Albany Democrat, who doesn’t face voters again until 2026, did not want to hand a potent issue to the GOP who in 2022, with Hochul’s name on the ballot, defeated DCCC Chair Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney while picking up three suburban House seats.
That down ballot collapse of New York State’s Democrats handed control of the House of Representatives to the Republican caucus, which in 2021, overwhelmingly voted not to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election following the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The MTA, which has already spent millions on the controversial plan that was projected to bring in $1 billion a year, had no comment.
BOOSTERS DISAPPOINTED
"Delaying congestion pricing is a slap in the face to the millions of New Yorkers who rely on public transportation every day just to appease the program's loudest foes," Elizabeth Adams, deputy executive director for public affairs for Transportation Alternatives, a public transit advocacy non-profit, said in a statement. "Congestion pricing is a $15 billion lifeline for the MTA—critical funding that will be lost if the program is stalled."
The Citizens Budget Commission, a pro-business non-profit think tank, issued a statement following Hochul’s announcement saying, "Congestion pricing is the transit trifecta—providing critical funding for transit, reducing emissions, and easing congestion.”
“We should be staying the course,” the CBC continued. “All sectors should contribute to improving transit, including drivers. Furthermore, it is a regional system that underpins the State’s economic engine. Sharing the cost of investment is the best strategy for the environment and the economy. All should be acutely aware that alternatives that raise New York’s already highest-in-the-nation business taxes or deplete the State’s precious reserves come with real consequences.”
“In pausing congestion pricing, Gov. Hochul has effectively killed the MTA Capital Plan,” tweeted Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens) who chairs the Labor Committee. “This is a slap in the face to our neighbors who rely on a functioning public transportation system. This decision will also cost NYERs jobs and will have devastating environmental consequences.”
NOT DEAD YET…..
Mayor Eric Adams appeared to be resolved to finding a way to implement some version of the unpopular plan while offering the governor some political cover.
“Everyone has heard me say that we need to get congestion pricing right, and any changes to our city’s transportation network must prioritize working-class New Yorkers while delivering cleaner air, safer streets, and better transit,” Adams said. “The governor has been a great partner and she understands we must balance combatting climate change and reducing emissions with the economic impact of implementing congestion pricing at this time. I have full confidence in our MTA Board appointees, Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi and City Planning Director Dan Garodnick, as we work toward effectively implementing this first-in-the-nation congestion pricing plan and getting it right from the start.”
For months, unions representing blue collar workers spoke out about the congestion pricing plan. Uniformed Firefighter Association President Andy Ansbro told Work-Bites his members should be exempted because the FDNY relies on them having access to their personal vehicles to be able to move to different fire houses in the same shift as required.
“Every day, dozens of firefighters who start off in one firehouse during their tour of duty are then sent to another firehouse in order to compete their tour. Nobody knows where they will be going until they show up for work and they figure out where the shortages are—so, the member’s car has always been considered an extension of the department,” Ansbro said. “So, this would put our members in the position of having to pay additional money while they are using their car for the City of New York.
Ansbro also added that relying on mass transit would be impractical because of the 70 to 80 pounds of gear firefighters need to carry with them when they are moved around during their tours.
The UFA leader welcomed Hochul’s about-face.
“I am happy to see the governor rolled back her congestion pricing plan,” Ansbro said. “I am hoping it takes a permanent hiatus. My members voiced their concerns. Everyone knew the price tag was way too high and probably wouldn’t do what was intended, but I am glad the governor was listening.”
BIG WIN FOR WORKING PEOPLE?
“it’s a big win for working people—we can’t afford congestion pricing,” said Gloria Middleton, president of CWA 1180, which represents several thousand administrative managers across all city agencies. “As a resident of Harlem, those cars looking to avoid Manhattan south of 60th were going to park in Harlem to get on the train. We already have the highest asthma rate between Manhattan and the Bronx for our children. So, with all these additional emissions with all the parking it was all only going to get worse.”
"Governor Hochul heard the concerns of educators and ordinary New Yorkers that this plan for congestion pricing just shifts pollution, congestion, and costs onto already struggling communities,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers [UFT]. “ As an organization that has gone to court to fight this plan, we applaud the governor for making the right decision.”
"We should be taxing the rich, not the poor to pay for the MTA's budget shortfalls, said Bhairavi Desai, head of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “But time and again, the MTA has relied on the hard-earned dollars of cab drivers to fill their coffers, including by implementing the first MTA tax on cab rides in 2019, at a time when we were witnessing a devastating wave of NYC's yellow, green, livery, and Uber drivers dying by suicide.”
Desai continued, "The governor is reportedly concerned about the slow post-COVID recovery for CBD businesses. Proof of that slow recovery is reflected starkly in the 50 percent reduction in fares that yellow cab drivers are still experiencing. Taxi drivers need more relief, not more taxes. We're calling on the governor to suspend the two existing MTA taxes on cab drivers to give them a fighting chance to bounce back."
Earlier this year, over three quarters of the 102 unions represented at the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] voted to join in a federal lawsuit opposing the MTA’s proposal filed last month by the UFT and Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella (R). The filing alleges the MTA’s plan was “a regressive and discriminatory pricing scheme that violates Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”
Fossella and the UFT were joined in the lawsuit by three civil rights organizations and 18 elected officials representing Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens, along with Suffolk, Orange, Dutchess, Rockland, Sullivan, Delaware, Otsego, and Ulster counties. In July, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy filed a similar federal lawsuit arguing federal regulators who approved the MTA’s plan had relied on a “fundamentally flawed and improperly truncated decision-making process" that neglected to study how the diversion of traffic from Manhattan, as a consequence of the congestion charge, would impact the surrounding New Jersey communities environmentally.
Back in November, John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union of America, resigned from the Traffic Mobility Review Board, which was tasked with implementing the MTA’s congestion pricing. Samuelsen wrote in his resignation letter that the MTA had “failed to meet the moment” by not making ‘transit more frequent, available, and affordable to attract drivers to the transit system right now—before the first toll is even collected.”
“I don’t want to have my name on the report because I am concerned it will become a rubber stamp of the overall congestion pricing ethic,” Samuelsen told THE CITY news outlet at the time. “And the overall congestion pricing ethic is flawed because they have refused to put new service out.”
BLOOD IN THE WATER?
“The moment she moved to implement a broken promise congestion pricing plan this became a political disaster and, unfortunately, it can bleed and spread into the Congressional races,” Samuelsen added. “So, Hochul’s political ineptitude has now potentially killed the efforts by the Democrats to take back the House of Representatives.”
Samuelsen left open the possibility that there was time for the Democrats to recover, and cited labor’s recently successful efforts to help elect Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-3rd). “We played a huge role in that race,” Samuelsen said proudly.
Historically, the Democratic Party has been far better disposed to unions than the GOP. So-called “right to work states” in the South are particularly hostile to unions, creating a powerful low wage cartel that works with multinationals like Mercedes to depress wages. During former President Donald Trump’s tenure, the federal government took unprecedented steps to curtail the union presence in the workplace.
Samuelsen warns Hochul made Democrats vulnerable because “she allowed herself to be brought under the spell of the Rasputin-like spell of Janno Lieber”—the CEO of the MTA who was previously president of World Trade Center Properties LLC, and was the point person for the Silverstein’s organization’s redevelopment of the World Trade Center site.
The TWU leader said Lieber “and his rich guy real estate club” formed an “odd couple” alliance with “the Long Island City and Williamsburg hipsters” that saw congestion pricing as a silver bullet. “Hochul allowed herself to be convinced that the hipster and rich guy combination was an accurate reflection of the Democratic Party—forgetting that blue collar New York is the base of the Democratic Party.”
FDNY EMS Lt. Anthony Amojera, vice president of DC 37’s Local 3621, which represents FDNY EMS officers, and who like firefighters rely on their cars, welcomed Hochul’s reversal. He wants Albany to instead revive the Stock Transfer Tax it’s been rebating back to Wall Street since 1982 to the tune of almost $400 billion.
“There are other ways to raise funds that have never been explored like reviving the Stock Transfer Tax,” Amojera told Work-Bites. “Congestion pricing would have meant a $6,000 cut for EMS workers who make the least money, and we are the busiest first responders.”
“The state can simply collect the Stock Transfer Tax that already exists and be in the double digit billions of dollar range—and that can take care of transit,” former City Council and Assembly Member Charles Barron told Work-Bites.
“The Stock Transfer Tax is a way of basically having a progressive sales tax that’s a trivial [.10 per $100] amount of money,” said James Henry, an economist and international tax expert, as well as a Yale University Global Justice Fellow. “It’s largely paid for by non-New Yorkers and generates a whole lot of revenue that’s rather easily collected. The burden falls on everyone in the top one-percent of the income bracket, heavy traders and speculators on Wall Street.”
The UFA’s Ansbro favors more robust fare collection to help close the MTA’s funding gap.
“If they want to improve transportation they’ve got to make sure everyone getting on the subway is paying—people that use the system should pay for the system,” he said. “It’s a benefit that feeds on itself. When you show people that there’s law and order in the subway, and that people are paying their fares, you are going to get more people on the subway.”
According to Samuelsen, the MTA’s congestion pricing plan was also doomed in part because the region is balkanized into transit fiefdoms including the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, New Jersey Transit, the MTA, Metro-North and the LIRR.
“On the next go-round wouldn’t it be wonderful if the U.S. Department of Transportation coordinated a massive regional congestion pricing system that was fair to everybody, while still recognizing the City of New York was central to the economy of three states in the Northeast,” he said.