The Hochul Hoax: ‘Only Hochul Would Call a Toll Going From $0 to $9 a Tax Cut’
Hochul lies to New Yorkers: “I’m proud to announce we have found a path to fund the MTA, reduce congestion and keep millions of dollars in the pockets of our commuters. You heard that correctly: It was $15 before, and now it is $9.”
After abruptly pausing the start date of Manhattan’s “congestion pricing tolls” in June, citing “facts on the ground,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the initiative will now go into effect on Jan. 5. Drivers entering the city south of 60th Street will be forced to fork over $9 for the privilege. Those who drive into New York City five days a week will pay an extra $2,300 per year.
One might take the governor at her word – that she halted the June start date due to “economic concerns including high inflation and post-pandemic vacancy rates in Manhattan office buildings.” But in reality, her decision came after a talk with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Knowing how unpopular congestion pricing is with voters, Jeffries was concerned this issue would hurt the party’s chances of winning back control of the House in November.
With the election over, Hochul has little time to waste. She must work fast because this initiative requires approval from the federal government. The Biden administration, of course, is on board. But President-elect Donald Trump has (wisely) vowed to end the tolls when he takes office.
Hochul is hoping that if she can get the tolls up and running before he returns to the White House, it will be far more difficult for him to stop.
The income generated by the tolls will be used to pay for sorely needed repairs and upgrades to the city’s 110-year-old mass transit system which are estimated to cost $15 billion. No one is disputing the fact that this overhaul is necessary.
The bigger issue is that, somewhere in its massive budget, leaders in Albany should be able to find the funds to pay for it. New York City’s mass transit system has been in decline for years. The work to repair it and the money needed to fund it, will occur over a period of years. The point is the state doesn’t need to come up with the entire $15 billion all at once.
In a Friday interview with Newsmax, New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis pointed out the shameless way the governor has tried to frame this brazen “cash grab” to make it sound more palatable to constituents. She calls it the “Hochul Hoax.”
During her Thursday announcement, Hochul told reporters, “I’m proud to announce we have found a path to fund the MTA, reduce congestion and keep millions of dollars in the pockets of our commuters. You heard that correctly: It was $15 before, and now it is $9.” Actually, it was zero before.
Before the launch of congestion pricing tolls was “paused indefinitely” in June, the price tag was slated to be $15. Because the government has since decided to lower the “starting rate” of the January tolls to $9, Hochul is disingenuously portraying this as a 40% tax cut.
Malliotakis said that “only @GovKathyHochul would call a toll going from $0 to $9 a tax cut.”
Malliotakis reminds Americans who may not care about a New York State issue that congestion pricing could soon be coming to a city near them.
She said, “This is a first in the nation-type program. And if we don’t stop it here in New York City, it’s going to come to a city near you. So we all have to collectively speak out against this unjust cash grab.”
Asked what she’s hearing from her constituents, the congresswoman said they are angry. “They don’t believe they should be paying a toll to drive into another borough of the city in which they live.” She noted the predicament of her constituents in Staten Island. They “already pay a toll to head toward Manhattan. Now they’re going to be hit with another toll.”
Only @GovKathyHochul would call a toll going from $0 to $9 a tax cut.
New Yorkers see right through the Hochul Hoax and we'll continue to do everything legally and legislatively possible to stop this congestion pricing scam! pic.twitter.com/Jk4IfjjNVG
— Office of Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (@RepMalliotakis) November 15, 2024
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), whose constituents will be directly impacted by the tolls, called Hochul’s plan a “scam” and a “cash grab.”
He reminds Hochul, “Commuters who drive because they don’t have adequate mass transit options already pay a toll to cross bridges and tunnels and pay a gas tax.”
Commuters who take transit should pay to ride — enforce the fare, rather than allow the MTA to lose over $700 million a year.
Commuters who drive because they don’t have adequate mass transit options already pay a toll to cross bridges and tunnels and pay a gas tax.
Congestion… https://t.co/1GoP1VL1GV
— Mike Lawler (@lawler4ny) November 15, 2024
Even the Democratic governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, is “firmly opposed” to the plan. Following Hochul’s announcement on Thursday, he wrote on X that his “administration will continue the fight to block this plan in court.”
In an attached statement, Murphy said, “All of us need to listen to the message that voters across America sent last Tuesday.”
[For those wondering, Murphy is term limited and cannot run for reelection in the gubernatorial race in 2025. He could, however, run for another office.]
I am firmly opposed to any attempt to force through a congestion pricing proposal in the final months of the Biden Administration.
My administration will continue the fight to block this plan in court. pic.twitter.com/WCFXtZkV7w
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) November 14, 2024
In the clip below, CBS News, who is clearly on board with congestion pricing, discusses the next steps that must be taken to implement the plan.
With Gov. Kathy Hochul pushing to restart congestion pricing in January, @elijahwestbrook breaks down the next steps it must pass. https://t.co/VWbn2zrV8y
— CBS New York (@CBSNewYork) November 15, 2024
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
Just another reason to move from NY.
Or to be thankful not to live there.
.
According to Hochul, if you think about moving to NY and then decide not to move there that’s the same as having moved out of there! SO, we can all move out of NY 10000 times!! New York is going to be totally crushed by all those people moving out of there like that.
I assure you that is happening. Despite mortgage rates having doubled from what they once were, most homes in a well-regarded suburban town in NJ that I know about still sell for more than the asking price.
That’s probably due more to the limited supply of houses on the market than a high demand.
Only if you’re Republican or willing to vote that way.
“New Urbanism” is coming to a town near you. Be prepared for less parking to get you to move to a non-existent mass transit option; then tax you with a “congestion tax” to fund it.
NY voters saw firsthand what a tyrant this lady is during COVID. Yet they elected her to serve again.
Yup, but some New Yorkers are starting to wake up. Cuomo beat his opponent in 2018 by over 23 points. Hochul beat Zeldin by less than 6 points.
How about all delivery companies stop going into New York?. No more Amazon, No more goods, No more gas and no more food.
See how long the thing lasts and how much time it takes to force Hochul from office.
So long as price gouging is legal, everybody will have all the stuff they want.
“So long as price gouging is legal, everybody will have all the stuff they want.”
Well, except for those who can’t afford to pay the mordida.
NYC, SF, and LA have been in a race for most corrupt city with most abusive government: NYC won. The taxes never stop. I well remember Jan 1, 1966 when NYC instituted a city income tax. The tax started at 1.5% and went up from there over the years. Today it tops out at 3.876%. At the time I was an independent consultant working outside the city. I had to file five returns: federal, state, city, unincorporated state tax and unincorporated city tax. What do you get for all these taxes: the pleasure of living in NYC with its massive congestion, corruption, crime, dirt, pollution, and obnoxious residents. I moved out in 1972, and never went back. The very few people I know still left there wouldn’t go anywhere else.
This new congestion tax will be a real strain on many people. Watch NYC waste and steal the money with little improvement in the transportation system. Been through this so many times. Seen so many failures. Trump put the city to shame when he managed to give the city a new skating rink at his expense. The city tried to build a new rink for four years and failed. Trump got it built in four months. This little incident tells you everything about how awful the governance of NYC was and is. It all started with Major La Guardia. Despite being a Republican he was a crony of FDR, and expanded city government into areas unheard of before. Why should a city have a foreign policy and its own very generous welfare system?
The residents deserve what they get.
“NYC, SF, and LA have been in a race for most corrupt city with most abusive government: NYC won”
Chicago and Mayor Johnson are hurt that you ignore all their hard work
Apparently oden missed the last city meeting where the residents expressed their extreme pleasure with the man they voted into office.
New York spends that much on treasonously supporting illegal alien invaders over just a year or two.
How big a city can exist and still be viable? They become too big to not fail.
I think this is going to accelerate the death-spiral of New York City. Wall Street and many other companies started work-from-home because of COVID. Employees who already hated their commute into the city didn’t want to go back into what the companies found out was expensive office space. How many companies moved their staffs out of the city permanently
Further the attractions that made NYC worth the expense and hassle took a beating during COVID – the little boutiques and special restaurants couldn’t survive it, Then any chance of return and recovery was killed by two new factors: uncontrolled crime and a largely homeless and unemployed illegal immigrant population who made atmosphere uncomfortable. Tourists stopped coming.
Want to take the subway down to see a Broadway show? Not so many people do.
Now we have a place that workers don’t really to go with no attractions to draw tourists, making itself more unattractive by increasing costs in a noticeable way.
“ Around 158 companies managing $993 billion in assets, including AllianceBernstein and Elliott Management, moved their headquarters out of New York to states including Florida and Tennessee from the first quarter of 2020 to early 2023, according to a Bloomberg study…
https://www.costar.com/article/420490632/new-york-california-lose-firms-managing-an-estimated-2-trillion-in-assets
Interstates 95 and 77 need toll exits for non residents.
McCarthy tried the same nonsense when he tried to brag about the ‘cuts’ he made… by giving the IRS a slightly smaller increase than they asked for.
It’s one of the reasons the RINOs don’t even bother to pretend putting out budgets anymore, because too many normies got wise to their lies about their so-called ‘cuts’.
I hate tolls and I think they all should be illegal except for tolls that are eliminated once the road is paid for, and that amount is known ahead of time
There are two scheduled increases in this toll in the next five years. It will never go away, it will just become more expensive. And Malliotakis makes a good point. If this works in New York, similar tolls will be rolled out in big cities throughout America. It is a terrible idea.
San Francisco kept its tolls going by refinancing the debt on the Golden Gate bridge and extending the term. The law enabling said tolls specifies that they end when the debt is paid off.
“The income generated by the tolls will be used to pay for sorely needed repairs and upgrades to the city’s 110-year-old mass transit system which are estimated to cost $15 billion. ‘
do you really think that’s where the money will go? really?
It’s already a shell game. You would think that the money from mass transit would go to fund mass transit and the money from the roads would go to the roads. But no. For some reason, people not using mass transit are paying for it and keeping the mass transit prices artificially low.
I’d rather have a president who grabs pussies than a governor who rapes taxpayers.
Takes yo back to Barky …
‘Toll fees created or saved!!’ – Crappy Hochul
Is anybody ever going to look into where the Obama nearly trillion dollar “infrastructure” bill money went? Or where the Biden nearly trillion dollar “infrastructure” bill money went? DOGE needs to investigate. They promised to address all these aging transportation=related issues.
Slap a toll fee on commuters who go into the city to work, shop, make deliveries, eat in restaurants, visit museums, attend plays/entertainment to fund a mass transit system that’s losing money b/c of unenforced user fees, crazy folks on board, perception of unsafe, dirty conditions?
All transportation/transit systems should be funded by user fees. Want roads built/repaired…fuel tax/registration fees on the folks who use the roads. Figure out how to do user fees for bike lanes, buses, trains, subway systems onto the folks who use them at the rate necessary to fund them.
The future is living in edge cities and work from home job, only commute to the office one day per week.
Daily commute even without tolls isn’t effective use of resources. The extra rent for office space for employees who don’t need to be there is just dumb.
IMO the future is gonna be a shift to retain and bring the 20-35% core employees into much smaller offices. The remaining ’employees’ will be short term contractors working on specific programs/projects with clear timelines/ thresholds to meet. This will give freedom to the contract workers/gig workers and save massive amounts of $ on benefits, payroll and reduced office expenses.