Mayor's Grab at Transit Funds May Fail
By ANNIE KARNI,
Governor Spitzer is balking at the portion of Mayor Bloomberg 's 2030 plan that would give the city more sway on funding mass transit projects, state officials said.
The Sustainable Mobility and Regional Transportation Financing Authority is one of 127 initiatives Mr. Bloomberg unveiled last month that are designed to make the city sustainable by 2030 as it prepares for an influx of an expected 1 million new residents over the next 25 years.
The SMART Authority, which would be funded by the city, the state, and the fees raised through congestion pricing, would serve as a bank that would be used to fund expansion of the region's mass transit system. It would help pay for expansions to the system such as the Second Avenue subway and the renovation of Pennsylvania and Moynihan stations.
While Mr. Bloomberg has framed the new authority as a monetary boost to the region's mass transit system, Albany lawmakers say it looks to them more like a power grab by the city. "You have the MTA, so what do you need the authority for?" a Democratic assemblyman of Westchester, Richard Brodsky, said in an interview. "It's essentially about control, not policy. What they're really saying is that decision making over regional transportation should be made by the city."
Under the plan, city and state officials would determine how much money each transit project would receive from the fund, giving the city a say in mass transit funding where it currently has almost none.
MTA officials are also worried that the city's plan to pour more money into mass transit could leave them with a bigger financial burden down the line, sources said. SMART funds would be used only for capital projects, leaving the MTA with the daily costs of operating the new transportation services, such as express bus lanes.
Mr. Bloomberg, sources said, could demote the funding authority to the role of an advisory board if it means winning support for congestion pricing or other initiatives by the end of this legislative session. A spokesman for the mayor's lobbying office, Farrell Skerlove, said it was still too early to be negotiating parts of the plan away.
"It's not clear how adamant Mayor Bloomberg is on the SMART board," City Council Member John Liu said in an interview. "The goal here is ostensibly to reduce traffic congestion, not to start a turf war." Mr. Liu, who heads the council's Transportation Committee, said the funding authority was not a critical component of the plan. The $350 million that would be raised annually through congestion pricing could stay within the city budget and still be passed onto the MTA or the Port Authority, he said.
Missing from a long list of transportation projects that would be financed by the SMART fund was the Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel, which would link Brooklyn to New Jersey and the national freight rail network, which could reduce the number of trucks on city streets. Governor Spitzer and the Port Authority are expected to assume control from the city of a study of the freight tunnel. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat representing parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, is the tunnel's primary champion, and he is now hoping to move the plan forward with state, rather than city, support. Mr. Nadler in 2005 raised $100 million in federal funds to design and engineer the freight tunnel.
