City Hall’s half-price fare $hake for poor

Half-price MetroCards will become available in January to about 800,000 of the city’s poorest residents under a preliminary deal struck Thursday at City Hall, sources said.

Under pressure from City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Mayor de Blasio agreed to spend $212 million a year to subsidize the fares for the city’s neediest, according to two sources.

The sources said the city’s fiscal 2019 budget being finalized this month will include only $106 million for the proposal, to allow time to set up the mechanisms ahead of an expected launch in 2019.

The deal is a huge victory for the new speaker, who publicly telegraphed that it was his No. 1 priority in his first budget negotiation with the mayor.

As of April, the city planned to spend $89 billion in the new budget.

De Blasio had supported the goal of the half-price initiative, which would be available to New Yorkers below the federal poverty line, which for a family of four is income of no more than $25,100.

But the mayor has repeatedly said the city couldn’t and shouldn’t pay for it.

Instead, he pushed for a new tax on the wealthy that would fund both reduced-cost MetroCards and much-needed MTA repairs.

“I understand the City Council wants to achieve something noble, but it’s going to be a very straightforward conversation with them about the actual money we have available and how far it will reach,” he said on April 10.

Several days later, the mayor told WNYC radio that “the challenge is I don’t know where we find $200 million after the many cuts we received and unfunded mandates we received from Albany in the last budget.”

Mayoral spokesman Eric Phillips denied late Thursday that there was an agreement in place.

Several Council members also denied that anything had been finalized, and a spokeswoman for Johnson declined to comment.

Advocates who have been pushing for the “fair fares” for more than three years hailed the preliminary deal. “This will make an enormous difference for economically struggling New Yorkers and will be a major step towards making New York a fairer, more equitable city,” said Community Service Society spokesman Jeff Maclin.

MTA board member Andrew Albert told The Post: “As long as the city pays for it, that’s great,” he said. “We have to be made whole. We are going to need every dollar for rebuilding the system.”