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With less than four weeks to go until congestion pricing began in New York City, Governor Kathy Hochul said she suddenly decided not to implement the controversial plan to raise money for the MTA with a $15 charge to drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street. That angered the handful of proponents of the plan who saw it as beneficial. However, she never said the plan was dead for good, either, which angered the majority of New Yorkers who feel the plan will only be reintroduced after election day.
New York Representative Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY-4th) is among those actively trying to make sure congestion pricing is dead once and for all. Speaking on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program, D’Esposito says he will still try to introduce legislation to outlaw the plan not because he doesn’t trust the governor, but because… well, actually, he doesn’t trust the governor.
“I don’t think it matters if they win or lose,” D’Esposito told Berman and Riedel. “I think the day after Election Day, Kathy Hochul will be right back to screwing hard-working New Yorkers and people who are traveling into the city… What we say yesterday, or the day before, was purely politics. I mean, it’s been reported that the minority leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jefferies, actually had a conversation with Governor Hochul and said in essence this is an issue that matters to New Yorkers.
D’Esposito thinks the whole approach to congestion pricing is just a way for Albany politicians to look down their noses at their constituents; now he hopes the voters will remember that point. “They know exactly who was the architect of this plan, who wanted to cost some commuters in and out of the city upwards of $4,000 a year, and obviously local businesses even more. They know that it was Kathy Hochul, they know that it was Democrats in the state legislature, and voters are smart enough. Quite frankly, this is probably the most transparent thing that Kathy Hochul has done in her tenure. She’s at least admitted that the only reason why she’s putting the brakes on this is purely politics.”
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