Results tagged “assemblymanrichardbrodsky”

After his $500,000 donation to NY State Republicans was revealed, Mayor Bloomberg explained why he did it to reporters while attending a Mayors Against Illegal Guns conference, "I've said repeatedly, I will help those who help us. They have stood up for the city a number of times — when we needed to have a voice in Albany and we didn't have that voice from the Assembly or from the governor, whether it was the last governor or this governor."

A New York State Assemblyman ticked off about congestion pricing for suburban drivers is retaliating by proposing a $4-per-ride surcharge for taxi riders, rather than the congestion fee of $8 for motorists entering Manhattan below 60th St. That taxis are another form of mass transit that allow New Yorkers to get around without owning a car escapes Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, whose district includes parts of Westchester County.

Less than two weeks after Gov. Spitzer publicly reaffirmed his commitment to going forward with plans to construct Moynihan Station despite a $1 billion funding shortfall, it looks like the matter may be out of his hands. The New York Times is reporting that the whole $14 billion project, which would involve building Moynihan Station at The Farley Post Office building and constructing a new Madison Square Garden on the site, is on the brink of total failure.

No one thought congestion pricing would be easy but now some of the economic reality is sinking in. The MTA announced that it would need $767 million to upgrade service if people shift from cars to mass transit.

As part of the deal to advance congestion pricing (and nab the $354 million the feds are offering), the city and state have announced their appointees to a panel to, ur, study congestion pricing and develop a recommendation. The Mayor, Governor, City Council, State Senate Majority Leader, and State Assembly Speaker each get to select three appointees, while the Senate minority leader and Assembly minority leader each select one.

The failure of congestion pricing (at least for this legislative session) has cast a pall on NYC-Albany relations. Not least because Mayor Bloomberg spent some time yesterday slamming state lawmakers. He said:

New York City is today poorer because of Albany's inaction yesterday, and I think, sadly, it appears that we jeopardized, at best, and probably lost, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something with someone else's money.

Continue reading "Congestion Pricing Game: Choose Who to Blame "

Yesterday, The Politicker reported that Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver "quietly" met with Governor Spitzer and Senate Leader Bruno (separately) and that congestion pricing was one of the topics discussed. Silver has publicly doubted the feasibility of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan, leading the Mayor to go on the offensive and try to shame Silver and other lawmakers for holding up the legislation - especially when there's $500 million in federal funds for the taking.

The Daily News has an exclusive with Jan Gehl, the Danish architect the Department of Transportation would like to hire to help reduce congestion in the city. It's a nice introduction to Gehl, who has worked on congestion-reducing projects in London and Copenhagen, but it also seems like the perfect article to fire up passions. Gehl said, "...we can do is to reduce the number of parking spots. I would raise the price for parking right away." Street parkers, commence the freaking out! Some more Gehl quotes:

"There are so many places in this city where people are treated very badly on the sidewalk, where the congestion is unpleasant. ... The balance is not very good here....

Continue reading "Uncertainty About Congestion Pricing's Fate"

As the clock is counting down the time Albany has to approve Mayor Bloomberg's ambitious - and controversial - congestion pricing plan in order to qualify for $500 million in federal funding, Westchester Assemblyman Richard Brodsky is getting ready to explain why Albany shouldn't. He is releasing a report that calls congestion pricing "un-enactable". He suggests that the Mayor's plan is very different from what's before the Legislature. From the NY Sun:

While Mr. Bloomberg has assured Manhattan vehicle owners that they would likely not pay to move their cars within the tolled zone to comply with alternateside parking rules, Mr. Brodsky charges that such an exemption is not in the bill. The legislation also doesn't identify locations or standards for residential parking permits that have been put forward as a possibility for neighborhoods surrounding the tolled zone.

Continue reading "Congestion Pricing Showdown: Bloomberg Vs. Brodsky"

Though the Partnership for New York City's Kathryn Wylde told the NY Times that she finds Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver "quite the opposite" of the "dark Darth Vader figure of Albany" that many people think him to be, we're betting that Mayor Bloomberg thinks Silver is quite Vaderish. A number of lawmakers confirmed to the Post that the many people hate Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan for the city, offering comments like "It sucks, it does nothing for anybody, kill it" and "It's likely dead for good." And Streetsblog found out from new Department of Transportation Commisioner Janette Sadik-Khan that the city doesn't quite have a Plan B if congestion pricing doesn't go through. She said:

Everyone is shooting for [approval of the plan on Thursday when the legislative session officially ends] but the promise of a special legislative session later this summer is still out there. So, Plan B is the special session. We are not giving up hope at all. We are fully committed. We need to get this legislation passed. It needs to pass now. It would be ridiculous to throw away hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds. That's our plan and when the plan passes we're looking to institute a series of immediate short term improvements before the switch is flipped on congestion pricing, including increased express bus service, ferry service and a variety of other initiatives. So, our emphasis is on making sure this congestion pricing program passes. On the transportation side, we don't think there's anything more important for the future of New York than getting this plan through.

Ah, the first rumble between MTA Executive Director Elliot Sander and the city! Sander has threatened to stop the 7 line extension if the city won't pay for cost overruns. Because Assemblyman Richard Brodsky asked about the project's budget, Sander wrote a letter to him (which he made public), stating, "It is M.T.A.’s position that we are under no legal obligation to absorb any additional costs or overruns." Ha! As we all know, MTA projects attract additional costs and overruns like honey does bees, and budgeting only $100 million for overruns (the city's current commitment is $2.1 billion) sounds low.

Even though Governor Pataki may have agreed to not to fill all seats at state agencies, there are many things for the Democrats to be upset about. For instance, the Empire State Development Corporation, headed by Pataki flunky Charles Gargano, selling 185,000 square feet at 633 Third Avenue - aka Governor Pataki's NYC offices - for $100 million without letting other state officials know. Democratic Assemblyman Richard Brodsky tells the Daily News that the $100 million sale is "at best, bizarre and, at worst, illegal," saying that the ESDC should have gotten the space appraised.

There's rarely any good news when the West Side railyards are involved. Yesterday, it seemed like a sure thing, the city and MTA coming to an agreement that would divvy up various parts of the land, open it up to new zoning, and usher in the long-awaited 7 line extension. But now critics say the overrun estimate sounds measly since the project to link LIRR trains to Grand Central has $2 BILLION in overruns (it's now expected to cost $6.3 billion!). Various groups, such as the Straphangers Campaign, as well as politicians (and a former MTA chairman) are worried about potential overruns given the MTA's history and debt problems - and the fact that construction costs are "rising by almost 2% a month," as per the NY Times. Well, get this project rolling, then! Assemblyman Richard Brodsky says, "Our first review of the documents indicates that if the $2 billion number is wrong, the consequences to the M.T.A. and the state will be enormous....This raises substantial questions whether it could bankrupt the M.T.A.” Eep.

Well, the heat wave is past, the dead are being counted, and so it is now time for the city's papers to fill up their first-Saturday-in-August issues with newsprint on the aftermath and what could've gone worse. So let's just go with that old-blog-standard, the roundup:

After surveying flood damage around the region, Governor George Pataki came to Manhattan with good news: The U.S. Customs and Border Protection office will lease 600,000 square feet in Freedom Tower. At a rate of $40-50 per square foot, this is considerably less than midtown rents which are around $75 per square foot (the agency has a few offices around town), but they won't be able to move in for five or so years. However, this news did encourage Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia, who had hinted that the tower would need to be scaled back if government groups didn't take 1 million of the tower's 2.8 million square feet.

State Assembly members met with various parties involved with the World Trade Center rebuilding yesterday to discuss development progress. Or, rather, the lack of progress. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky even said, "I wouldn't do any more groundbreaking right now" as a zing to all the ceremonies, photo ops and public puffery but little actual work getting done. And what's more, WTC leaseholder and developer Larry Silverstein says that insurance companies may not pay out all of the promised $4.6 billion now that the Port Authority will take control of Freedom Tower. Oy. The Port Authority and Silverstein are asking the insurers for reassurance that payments won't be taken away because of the Port Authority's involvement; it'd be a pretty bad public relations nightmare for the insurers not to pay for the rebuilding of Ground Zero, but with hundreds of millions at stake, you can't blame them for trying.

While the city has been reassuring its residents that we're going to be okay during the case of a natural disaster, like a hurricane, State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky claims the city's plan is "replete with failures". Of course, Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat, hasn't actually seen all of the city's disaster plans (not for lack of trying; he says that the city wouldn't let him review the evacuation plans), may be trying to drum up some interest in his run to be Attorney General. The city, on the other hand, claims that they did cooperate with Brodsky and says once again that the city is prepared; plus, Brodsky has a "standing offer" to meet with the Office of Emergency Management's commissioner. Gothamist has an admittedly low opinion of the State Assembly, and we'd like to think that the city is ready, but how about this gets settled with some sort of independent arbitrator?

Roosevelt Island, pop. 10,000, is in the news again. The small town in the middle of the big city, one of the great urban planning "eh-steps" (not quite a misstep, but close), was last seen in the news scaring Jennifer Connely in "Dark Water." But now its got a political scandal, or the makings of one, to call its very own.