Governor Cuomo Resigns - What Does This Mean For Mass Transit and Infrastructure Projects?

Governor Cuomo looking at progress of the 72nd Street Second Avenue subway station
 in December 2016 NY GOVERNOR'S OFFICE

Cuomo resigns. What does that mean?

We believe that as long as he has a telephone and a computer, not much, other than the title of Governor. And we still have the COVID deaths in nursing homes to investigate and hold him accountable for.

This is New York, where the web of politics strangles independent thinkers. 

Betsy Combier
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What Cuomo’s Resignation Could Mean For Mass Transit and Infrastructure

By Stephen Nessen, Gothamist, August 11, 2021

When Governor Andrew Cuomo steps down in two weeks, he leaves behind a legacy of transportation and infrastructure projects — from bridges to airports, to a new train station in midtown Manhattan. Other projects have yet to begin or secure the funding they need, but transportation watchdogs are optimistic that the incoming governor, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Hochul, and whoever comes after her, will keep them on track.

As governor, Cuomo has lorded over transportation projects for better and worse, and has called the shots from Albany on many matters that affect the daily commute in the New York City region. Most prominently, he controls the MTA by recommending the majority of its 21 board members, and approving all of them.

“One can hope that transit professionals will be able to serve independently, and have space to do their jobs,” said Rachael Fauss, senior research analyst with the good government group Reinvent Albany.

Former New York City Transit President Andy Byford said the main reason he resigned in January 2020 was because of the Governor making his job “intolerable,” and that he was being “undermined.”

MTA board member Neal Zuckerman, who has been on the board since 2014, said Cuomo’s involvement moved along some major projects. Three Second Avenue subway stops opened, East Side Access is nearly complete, and four new Metro-North stations in the Bronx are on track to be completed.

“It is certainly true that in those years, related directly to greater involvement from Governor Cuomo and through his representatives, there have [sic] been an increased focus on operational efficiency and capital investment and it has benefited New Yorkers,” Zuckerman wrote in a statement. But, he added that he’ll be glad to see an end to the governor’s interference with the board’s decision-making.

“The MTA, as an independent public authority, should be governed as one,” he said.

Board member David Jones said Cuomo’s successor will need to remain focused on the MTA’s expected deficit in the coming years — up to a $3.5 billion in 2024 and 2025 combined if there are no fare hikes, wage freezes, or reductions in service. And the agency is still trying to figure out how to get more people back to mass transit, due to plummeted ridership during the pandemic.

“We have a lot at risk here, we’ve seen it from a lot of the projections that we’re going to need resources into mass transit,” Jones said.

Two of Cuomo’s appointees to the MTA board were cited in Attorney General Letita James’ report that concluded he sexually harassed 11 women, and it’s unclear if they would have to step down along with the governor.

Board member Linda Lacewell, who is also Department of Financial Services Superintendent and a former special counsel to Cuomo, was referenced several times. The report says she helped co-write a statement about Cuomo’s integrity, and one victim said Lacewell was involved in working to discredit Cuomo accuser Lindsey Boylan.

In March, MTA board member and Cuomo confidante Larry Schwartz, who was named the state's "Vaccine Czar," called county executives to drum up support for the governor, after a second allegation of sexual misconduct surfaced.

The group Riders Alliance has held frequent rallies and press conferences condemning Cuomo for playing politics when it comes to mass transit. The group is looking forward to seeing what Hochul could do to improve it.

“The future of the city and state hinges on our governor putting fast, frequent, reliable, affordable, and accessible public transit at the top of her crowded policy agenda. Riders will look to Governor Hochul to empower competent MTA leaders and give them the resources they need to provide the services we demand,” spokesperson Danny Pearlstine wrote in a statement.

Other regional projects are likely to forge ahead without Cuomo.

He recently balked at supporting the Gateway project, which would require a mix of federal and local funds to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River, and repair another damaged by Hurricane Sandy. He questioned whether New York would contribute its share of the funding, and seemed to be tying Gateway to his redevelopment plans for Penn Station. But with a deadline at the end of August for all parties to get paperwork in to federal officials, it now appears Gateway is still on track.

"New York State has made its support for and commitment to Gateway clear time and again, including in its most recent capital and financial plan published just a few days ago,” according to a statement from Stephen Sigmund, a spokesperson for the Gateway Project. “Today's announcement does not change that commitment,” he said of the governor’s resignation.

Cuomo was a champion of airports, pushing renovations and upgrades at John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia, as well as the controversial AirTrain plan in Northern Queens. There were also his bridge projects, with expanded lanes opening on the Kosciuszko Bridge in 2019, and the replacement of the ailing Tappan Zee Bridge with new spans named after his father in 2017. In the midst of the pandemic, he heralded the opening of the Moynihan Train Station, across the street from Penn Station, and now used by Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road riders.

“Any one of these projects is more than any one individual,” said Tom Wright, President and CEO of the Regional Plan Association. “I think what’s been put in place is going to remain, and in particular with the federal funding coming through, now’s not the time to slow down, take a pause, rethink things, but rather to try to move forward and try to complete them.”

On the day Cuomo announced his resignation, the U.S. Senate passed President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill, although its fate in the House is uncertain. An expected $11 billion from the bill could flow to the MTA for major projects Cuomo championed, like the next phase of the Second Avenue subway into East Harlem, and the Gateway Project. A key component of Gateway includes expanding Penn Station and redeveloping midtown, a project Cuomo made the centerpiece of his final state of the state speech this year.

There’s also the future of congestion pricing, which could raise a billion dollars a year for mass transit. The plan to charge drivers that enter Manhattan below 60th Street was approved by Cuomo in 2019, held up by the Trump administration, and then moved forward by the Biden administration this spring. It appears congestion pricing is not a priority for Cuomo because the MTA has not created the paperwork the federal government requires to move it forward, a point Mayor Bill de Blasio flagged last month.

“New York City’s congestion pricing plan is mission critical for generating a new revenue stream for the MTA, reducing traffic congestion in Manhattan, and cutting greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a statement from Renae Reynolds, Executive Director of Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

“As the city recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, the new governor must move quickly to implement congestion pricing fully and fairly, provide more frequent subway, bus, and commuter rail service, and build out a more accessible transit network.”

Michael Goodwin: Better to Have de Blasio's Incompetency Than Someone Else in Charge

 

                         NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio

Three reasons NYC is stuck with Bill de Blasio’s unbelievable incompetence: Goodwin

Michael Goodwin, NY POST, September 23, 2020

With his refusal to crack down on crime and inability to get schools and restaurants fully opened, Mayor Bill de Blas­io has reached new depths of incompetence at exactly the wrong time. It’s one thing to be a dud when there is room for error, but this is an emergency, and the future of New York is growing ever more gloomy.

The mayor’s performance is so awful and the quality of life in such sharp decline that many New Yorkers who fled the pandemic have no plans to come back. Fears that the city is headed for a cliff are contagious and are leading to more frequent calls for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to remove de Blasio from office.

With no reason to believe the mayor is capable or determined to make things better, it’s tempting to join the chorus. The siren song is all the more seductive when you realize de Blasio’s term doesn’t end until Jan. 1, 2022, leaving him plenty of time to do more damage.

I am among those who relish the thought of de Blasio getting ejected from City Hall. In an instant, New York would be rid of its worst mayor ever.

Alas, reality interrupts the reverie. Despite the reasons to wish Cuomo would act, there are even better reasons to hope he doesn’t. Here are three.

First, de Blasio would be replaced by the public advocate, Jumaane Williams, who stands first in line of succession under the City Charter.

De Blasio is the first public advocate to be elected mayor, and his lack of experience at running anything has been revealed as a fatal flaw. Williams has that same lack of experience and a history of extreme anti-police activism that is exactly what the city doesn’t need during a surge in murder and shootings.

New York desperately needs a mayor who treasures the NYPD, not another one who trashes it. And on other critical issues, such as taxes and education, there is no reason to believe Williams would be an improvement.

Reason No. 2 for not supporting a Cuomo intervention is Cuomo himself. He is part of the reason people are fleeing.

He signed into law the so-called bail reforms that helped fuel the crime surge. He has been missing in action on reopening schools, effectively giving the teachers union a veto by saying, “Teachers have to feel safe.” He never gave subway or hospital workers that option.

The biggest mark against Cuomo is his calamitous policy of sending infected COVID patients to nursing homes, and his heartless refusal to own the death and grief it caused.

The Empire Center is suing his office to get the facts about how many nursing home residents actually died of the virus. Shamefully, the governor and his Health Department are hiding the data, almost certainly because it would reveal how they manipulated statistics. They also concocted a phony report to blame staff members for spreading the killer virus.

They concede that COVID killed some 6,600 people in long-term care facilities, but conveniently changed their counting method as the numbers soared. The best guess is that at least 10,000 died after getting infected in the facilities.

Moreover, Cuomo’s entire tenure leaves much to be desired. He’s been in office since 2011, and New Yorkers across much of the state were voting with their feet long before the pandemic over high taxes, rampant corruption and poor public services.

Reason No. 3 for resisting a quick hook for de Blasio is the terrible precedent it would set. The only comparable case came in 1932, when FDR, months before he was elected president, forced the flamboyant — and utterly corrupt — Mayor Jimmy Walker to resign.

That was the height of the Depression and Walker admitted to taking large amounts of cash from business owners while denying they were bribes. He agreed to leave office with more than a year remaining in his second term.

The big difference now is that there are no known criminal investigations of de Blasio, let alone pending charges. The feds probed pay-to-play allegations in his first term, but didn’t indict him, largely because they couldn’t find evidence he put any money in his own pocket.

Being a lousy mayor isn’t a crime, and the idea of substituting the decision of a governor for the will of voters simply because the mayor is widely seen as failing is generally repugnant. Once you start down that road, how do you resist the urge to regularly undo elections?

De Blasio, it should be noted, won both of his terms in landslides. Although turnout was only about 25 percent in both 2013 and 2017, he got nearly 800,000 votes the first time and about 725,000 the second time.

Those are very respectable numbers, similar to those Michael Bloomberg got in his first two elections and far above the 585,000 votes Bloomy got while winning his third term.

So the fault lies with those New Yorkers who voted for de Blasio, or not at all. Their choices surely are making life worse for most of them as well as for the rest of us.

Voters will get another chance next year. Until then, a great Ed Koch line seems appropriate for our suffering.

After his 1989 defeat as he sought his fourth term in City Hall, Koch was asked if he would ever run again. No, he said, then added, “The people have spoken and they must be punished.”

Game on in key Big Ten states

It’s the Big Ten election.

In some ways, the political battle over a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg changes everything. In another way, it changes nothing.

The race for the White House still depends on the outcome in the same handful of swing states. Most are in the heartland — and have colleges in the Big Ten athletic conference.

As CNN recently reported: “President Donald Trump got his football wish: The Big Ten college football conference will begin playing in late October. Trump had been pushing for the league, which has schools in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, among others, to start playing and had talks with the league. The league previously announced a suspension of its schedule.”

Trump’s intervention came after Joe Biden ran ads showing empty stadiums and blaming the president for the shutdown. “Let’s get back in the game,” the ad concluded.

Unfortunately for Biden, Trump did just that by helping to get the Big Ten to play ball.

NY’s US senators are good … for nothing

Reader Judith Levine believes New York’s rot is not limited to Cuomo and de Blasio, writing: “We also have two useless senators. In fact, is Kirsten Gillibrand still a senator?

“The city is in its death throes and not a peep from them. Chuck Schumer comes out of his hole every Sunday to rail against Trump, then goes back into hiding. They have done nothing for the city or state.”