Andy hurls train blame
Points finger at Legislature in MTA mess
ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo on Tuesday looked to shift blame for the subway system crisis on to the Legislature.
Cuomo (photo inset), who continues to say the city hasn’t paid its “legal obligation” to the MTA, sought to also blame the Legislature for choking the system of needed funding over the past several decades.
He said state lawmakers killed a plan when Michael Bloomberg was mayor to create a congestion-pricing system that would charge cars more to drive into busy parts of Manhattan.
He also accused lawmakers of not pushing the city to pay its fair share while at the same time rejecting the idea of fare hikes.
“New Yorkers are smart people and these are difficult times, and it’s time for some blunt truth and blunt realities,” Cuomo said.
During his tenure, he said, the state committed more than $8 billion to the MTA’s latest capital plan. He also accused “some politicians in Albany” of preferring to do nothing when it comes to finding money for the MTA so that they can’t be blamed.
“So the MTA gets no money and they’ve done this literally for 20 years and then they say, ‘Oh, my gosh. The trains are slow.’ How can you be surprised? You did it.”
Cuomo said he will include a congestion-pricing plan in his state budget proposal and called on the Legislature to enact it — or take the blame. “The fingerpointing has to stop,” Cuomo said. “If the Legislature does nothing, they’re driving the train.”
But lawmakers and transit advocates say it’s the governor who controls the MTA. They accuse him of not doing enough to fix the subway crisis, something that could be an issue during his reelection campaign in 2018.
The Daily News reported Monday that legislative Democrats want a new long-term funding scheme to be included in the state budget set to be enacted in the spring. The state Senate Democrats, led by Deputy Minority Leader Michael Gianaris of Queens, sent a letter to Cuomo saying as much.
Cuomo mocked the letter. “The MTA has to be funded, great, thank you,” he said. “That was a great bolt of wisdom that we need to know. The question is, how?”
He said plans by Gianaris and Mayor de Blasio to fund the subway system by raising taxes on millionaires has been rejected by legislative leaders from both parties. He also dismissed as unrealistic the idea of seeking additional federal funding.
Gianaris, picking up on Cuomo’s talk of “blunt truth,” sought to shift the blame back, noting that unlike the governor, the Legislature has no appointees to the MTA board.
He added, “I never realized Andrew Cuomo was so powerless over the state budget. To be blunt, many of us have been calling on the Legislature to do a lot more for a long time.”
Even though Cuomo lambasted the Legislature as a whole for not taking action for decades, the governor’s aides later called the Daily News to say he was taking aim specifically at Gianaris.