Bullies Lose

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn twisted enough arms to get the congestion pricing plan, albeit altered slightly, through the City Council by a vote of 30 to 20.
They announced with great glee their success before the television cameras. If they had been born and raised in Queens they might have said, pumping their fists in the air, “We beat ya, we beat ya,” like children in playgrounds all over the borough say when they win a game.
Queens has 14 members on the City Council, and still this flawed grab for federal dollars that gave rise to new questions every time somebody looked at it, managed to pass.
Joseph Addabbo; Tony Avella; Leroy Comrie; Dennis Gallagher; James Gennaro; Melinda Katz; Helen Sears; Peter Vallone, Jr. and David Weprin are our heroes for voting NO to the proposal on Monday, March 31.
To the five misguided souls who voted YES, we say, “Who were you kidding?” Eric Gioia; John Liu; Hiram Monserrate; James Sanders and Thomas White - you knew better but you succumbed to the pressure from City Hall.
We want to clean up the air pollution in Manhattan. And in Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island too. We are extremely tired of spending 30 to 60 minutes just to drive across Manhattan’s midsection at a crawl to get to the West Side Highway or into the Lincoln Tunnel.
We just do not want to see the taxpayers of our city burdened with another commuter tax. We want answers to all the questions that have been raised about the system. We want the revenues to fully fund mass transit and not be divertible or convertible.
As we have said repeatedly in this space, we believe the revenues for mass transit can be raised by merely enforcing the existing traffic and parking regulations that are currently on the books.
We watched with incredulity as Bloomberg included in the congestion pricing bill a requirement that the Port Authority agree to give the MTA $1 billion - or New York will hit Jersey drivers with up to a $4 fee. What nerve!
Thankfully, after hours of debate among the State Assembly Democrats, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was able to pronounce the bill as dead. Moreover, in an ironic twist, Silver turned the mayor’s arrogance against him in the end.
Bloomberg had said on Sunday, April 6 the he would accept “virtually none” of the changes Assemblymembers wanted to see in the bill. Silver said, “This is a plan, with some work, that could work, but it needs amendments.” Silver delivered his coup-de-grace subtly, “The mayor yesterday seemed to indicate no amendments were appropriate.” Thus, the ultimate defeat of congestion pricing was laid at the mayor’s feet.