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The three most powerful men in Albany—Governor Paterson, Assembly Speaker Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Smith—were able to come up with a $132 billion budget in secret. But any attempt to save the MTA is being stalled by the Senate.
At least, that's what Paterson says. PolitickerNY reports that Paterson complained about the Senate's discord at an event, "So there are Democratic senators who won't vote for the tolls and Democratic senators who won't vote for the mobility tax, and the Republican senators, all of them, who won't vote for anything. So, right now, I think that these elected officials have got to sit down, the senators, and at least have a plan. Like it or don't like it, the Assembly has a plan. The Senate if, if they were to offer a plan that financially is sound we would certainly consider it."
The Daily News details the impasse in the Senate: "Tolling the East and Harlem river bridges was taken off the table Tuesday because a handful of Senate Democrats, like Brooklyn's Carl Kruger, said they wouldn't vote for tolls, calling them unfair to motorists from Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. Now the plan is in jeopardy because some suburban Democrats are wavering under the heat from school districts that would see expenses rise with a payroll tax in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 12-county region." A source told the NY Times, "I think we’re nowhere" on a deal. In other words, Albany is doing what it's doing best: Being totally dysfunctional! (Albany is also where transportation plans go to die.)
Some of the ideas being thrown into the mix to generate MTA revenue in lieu of East and Harlem River bridge tolls include a 50-cent surcharge on NYC taxi rides, a 5% fee on car rentals and another auto-registration fee. One New York City resident sounded off to the Post, "It's ridiculous. They're raising the subway fare and the taxi fare at the same time. They should look at a congestion tax. They should get the commuters who come into New York and not the ones who live here." Hilarious—Silver killed congestion pricing last time. Anyway, get ready for Doomsday?
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How to solve the state's budget woes in one easy step:
Cut Medicaid.
How do you figure cutting Medicaid ? So all the poor folks out here should just live without the benefit of basic health care ? Pretty selfish dude . Hope you never fall on hard times and lose your price health care coverage and have to depend on Medicaid .
Gothamist and the New York media need to name all the names of those State Senators who oppose to the Ravitch Plan. New Yorkers should know their names, their districts and where they stand on the Ravitch Plan. No more of this "handful of Senate Democrats." Enough! Name names!!!
here are some names:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03272009/news/regionalnews/albany_pols_bus_ted_161578.htm
It's either cut some big programs, or toll the East & Harlem bridges. "Unfair" to outer borough drivers? Not so much. Car pool your lazy asses, take transit, learn to hate your fellow New Yorkers not from inside your private steel sarcophagus but in close proximity to them, where the only thing separating us is an iPod and a newspaper. A sustainable and dense city is bending and near to breaking to support selfish people's car habits.
Word! Nicely put.
Hard to disagree with the suggestion that NYC drivers suck as a whole, but raising bridge tolls to cover budgetary shortfalls is a terrible idea, as is raising the subway fare. Why? Because the MTA is poorly managed and will thusly manage additional funds poorly. Why? Because it's a recession and people have less money to begin with.
Not really . The MTA could balance there budget based on how they do business . One get rid of all them old ass cars from the 70's & 80's . The cost of maintaining them has got to be killing the MTA . Make drastic upgrades to the software in place for the metro card . ( If you have ever swiped your card and received that "Insufficient fare" notice and know you had money on said card , You know what I'm talking about) Start enforcing fare evasion rules ! I notice that some people that ride the buses, & subways don't pay the fare . ( Wheelchair riders) . (especially on buses) Stop wasting money on all these new "clean air hybrid buses", How many different versions of these buses do we need ? I understand the MTA has lost money but the majority of it is their own fault ! shitty business practices equal, A shitty business .
I am extremely disappointed with working family since they are supporting john liu for comptroller whose father was convicted of bank fraud and liu is just as crooked.
http://www.r8ny.com/blog/gothamwars/open_letter_to_wfp_executive_director_dan_cantor.html
the wf party is just another corrupted party, they use term limits to gather support yet they are not following up on the senate bill and now they are using this fare hike to gather more supporters. Well, I know them now for what they are.
CUT THE BLOATED SPENDING IN THE STATE....
Enough of tolls and fare hikes. In this state it's cost an arm and leg for public transportation or owning a car. It's like either walk, bike or sit home all day long.
"A sustainable and dense city is bending and near to breaking to support selfish people's car habits."
how "sustainable" can it be if it requires dozens of punitive measures just to keep the mta running?
i'm not a huge fan of drivers or driving, which is a lot of why i live here. i haven't driven in years and loathe the thought of continuing ever again.
but calling people "selfish" for driving - and not wanting to spend any more of their money - makes as much sense as calling transit takers selfish for wanting more state money to fund their selfish desire to live inside this "sustainable" city. it's like asking why don't the "lazy asses" of mass transit commuters get better jobs to make more money to spend on higher transit fees so they don't have to take money from others?
it's all really stupid misdirection. the real folks to blame aren't the drivers or the transit takers, but the flipping mta and years of chronic mismanagement and idiotic decisions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/nyregion/27mta.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
it's also fundamentally ridiculous to expect something that can never actually pay for its own costs to not run into problems like these every few years. you're relying on outside forces and sources to pay your bills, so the usual caveats about pipers and tunes apply. it sucks, but mass transit requires a lot of welfare-style spending by its very nature.
Supporting transit isn't welfare. The more efficiently we get people moving about the city, the more economic activity they can engage in, the less space the city needs to take up, and the less waste there is overall. My point is not be that this is all drivers' fault, but that it isn't unfair to tax an inefficient use of limited space to fund a system aimed at making the city more efficient and sustainable. Does that make sense?
that's a much better way of putting it, but it's still welfare. it's corporate welfare when we give large companies tax and infrastructure advantages, even if they employ lots of people relatively efficiently.
it's deeply unfair, unless the sole purpose of a city is to be economically efficient in the sense of accumulating as many taxes and fees as it can collect. there's probably few things as inefficient and distorting as rent control, for example, but i doubt efficiency arguments would carry much water.
but outside of all that, i stand by the nature of mass transit, however, makes it practically impossible to build something that wouldn't require lots of support and subsidy from outside the user base; alternately, it would be something so expensive that far fewer people would use it. you can't introduce competition, especially with rail lines; you can't really cut services without reducing the usefulness of the transit or driving away the people who need it most.
another way of structuring it would be to increase the scope of senior and students sliding scale fee method to include a means testing for transit. that would be about as politically popular as cancer.
so the mta and albany get to play chicken a bit more, and we'll continue to pay the price. at the very least, we can be glad the mta board isn't elected. can you imagine how shitty it would be if they had to run for office, collect money and actually pander to people? ugh.
I don't mind paying the extra fare on the subway. What bothers me is that the working poor and other low income groups are going to suffer most and they have no alternative.