Getting his ($ub)way
Cuo makes Blas pony up $418M more to MTA
The city is ponying up $418 million for subway improvements, despite months of Mayor de Blasio insisting the state should pick up the whole tab.
The $168.3 billion budget Gov. Cuomo announced Friday night includes the state’s half of the money for the MTA’s $836 million subwayrescue effort.
For months de Blasio had been saying the city wouldn’t provide additional cash without a guarantee it would be used for the subways and no other MTA projects.
Late last night, Cuomo’s spokeswoman, Abbey Fashouer, called the city’s agreement to pay its share “completely phony,’’ because the state would have seized it if the mayor didn’t turn it over willingly.
And she issued a new threat: “If the city is now sincere in funding what they legally owe the MTA, they should pay the [additional] $6 billion they owe . . . before we have to seize that, too.”
Other budget items were a bodyblow to de Blasio. They include a new mandate that the city get state approval for its homeless-outreach efforts before getting state funds.
City schools will get $334 million more from the state, but the budget requires it to disclose spending per school. Cuomo officials say the city’s current reporting only shows $9 billion of the $26 billion spent on education.
If the city fails to disclose the spending, the state will withhold $400 million in education funding.
The budget also allows the state to develop the area near Penn Station — which the de Blasio administration is against — and provides funds to build an AirTrain from the Long Island Rail Road to La Guardia Air- port, along with funding for a related easement the city opposes.
The city’s Housing Authority will get another $250 million from the state, but Cuomo will sign an executive order appointing an independent monitor over the public housing system chosen by the City Council and tenants.
The spending plan also includes an income tax cut for middle class New Yorkers, saving taxpayers an average of $250 each in 2018. By 2025, the savings would reach an average of $700 for joint filers making between $26,000 and $300,000.
The budget deal includes legislation to allow the city to put both the design and construction for some projects up for bid in a single contract, to avoid delays and save more than $1 billion. Design-build would be allowed for new jails to replace Rikers Island, the reconstruction of the BQE and for NYCHA projects — which de Blasio supports.
But Cuomo still used the measure to slam de Blasio’s 10-year timeline to close Rikers.
“Ten years is unacceptable,” he said Friday. “It can’t take you 10 years to build a jail if you’re really serious about doing it.”