Hizzoner jumps the tracks in gov feud
MAYOR de Blasio was doing well. He was sticking up for New Yorkers against an absurd proposal made by Gov. Cuomo to bail out the MTA to the tune of more than $400 million. The governor wants the city to save the MTA from the governor’s own disastrous management.
But then the mayor figured something out: He could use the governor’s failure to squeeze Gotham’s rich. And the mayor loves to squeeze the rich — even if it means losing a battle against the governor that he — and New York City — should have won.
For nearly a month, Cuomo has been deflecting attention from his own failures. Only 61.7 percent of subway trains run on time, sure — nearly a onethird drop since he took office.
But it can’t be the fault of the governor, or the MTA board that he’s appointed.
Instead, it must be de Blasio’s fault. No matter that the mayor recommends only a minority of the board members to the MTA and has no day-today responsibility.
The MTA’s problem must be a lack of money, in the governor’s recent thinking — and who has a lot of extra money lying around? The city of New York, with its $4.2 billion surplus.
Thus, the MTA has cobbled together an $800 million plan to fix the subways — and wants half of that from Gothamites.
No matter that the MTA’s own budget has increased by $3.4 billion since the governor has been in a charge, from $12.3 billion to $15.7 billion.
No matter, either, that much of that increase is due to the governor’s union deals. Payroll at NYC Transit, which runs the subways, has grown from $3.5 billion annually to $4.4 billion — a 26 percent increase, although inflation for the period was only 11 percent.
It’s easier to blame someone else: the mayor.
The mayor would be a great victim here — and was for a while. Three weeks ago, in response to the governor’s bullying, he said that “it’s not an issue of more money right now. It’s an issue of management.”
That was correct. The MTA cannot spend its existing money for capital investments. As of May, the MTA had only spent 22 percent of the money it has for tracks and switches.
Now, though, the mayor has changed his mind. He wants New York taxpayers to put up an extra $800 million annually for the MTA, increasing the authority’s budget by 5 percent. Why the turnaround? The mayor has figured out a way to soak the rich. He would get this money, he says, from a 13 percent hike on city income taxes that couples making over a million dollars pay.
This “millionaire’s tax,” the mayor lectured Monday, would fall on the 32,000 New York families “who typically travel in first class . . . It would make a huge, huge difference.”
Not really. The MTA already takes in more than $5.5 billion in annual taxes — including $1.7 billion from a payroll tax that, because it is a percentage of earnings, disproportionately falls on the wealthy.
As for voters who “want to see the wealthy pay their fair share,” as the mayor primly said Monday, good news for these folk: The top 1 percent of city taxpayers paid 49.3 percent of city income taxes in 2014, the last year for which city data is available.
De Blasio is ready to sacrifice up his own rich to look virtuous. But why should Westchester and Long Island millionaires get a free ride? They live in the MTA region, and benefit from mass transit.
The mayor is trying to look like a good socialist, but he looks like a chump, letting suburban millionaires slide.
Practically speaking, the money won’t do much good, even if the governor agrees to it.
On Monday, MTA chief Joe Lhota had lots to say about wanting more cash now: “I can’t wait ’til next year.”
But he had little to say about what the MTA is doing with the money it has. Asked “what work has started,” Lhota said, “I can’t answer that specifically.”
Only in New York do a governor and a mayor argue, in an economy providing record amounts of taxes, on how to increase the tax take — without worrying about whether they’re spending that money wisely.