Call to nix gov’s transit-fund raid

State lawmakers should pull the emergency brake on Gov. Cuomo’s proposal to raid $160 million dedicated to mass transit in New York, a collection of 30 watchdog groups, unions and advocates said Monday.

The coalition sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) saying the planned money shuffle “breaks public trust” and is a “backdoor tax on riders.”

Cuomo proposed the raids — which include moving $145 million worth of taxes dedicated to the MTA to the state’s general fund — through his executive budget in January. State budget officials said they were in line with 5% cuts the governor proposed for all state agencies to offset deficits caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Dedicated taxes are created by the Legislature to fund a specific purpose or program and are categorically different from the state general fund,” the letter said. “In the case of dedicated transit taxes, they were created to provide stable operating support for transit agencies.”

The letter was sent a day before Congress is expected to pass a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, which includes $6.5 billion in relief for the MTA, $6.5 billion for New York City’s government and $12.5 billion for the state’s coffers. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said those amounts were more than Mayor de Blasio and Cuomo asked for.

The group wrote in the letter that a raid on New York’s transit funds would hurt the state’s ability to secure more pandemic relief money from the feds down the road.

“For the state to raid and withhold hundreds of millions in dedicated funds risks securing these critical federal emergency funds,” the letter said. “There should be no fungibility of state dedicated funds, and receipt of federal aid cannot be an excuse for the state to raid or withhold dedicated transit funding.”

Representatives from Heastie’s and Stewart-Cousins’ offices did not respond to a request for comment — but on Sunday both leaders said the governor’s recent nursing home and sexual harassment scandals hurt his ability to govern and pass a budget before the state’s April 1 deadline. Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) called for Cuomo to resign.