ALBANY — Even with state spending expected to be tight because of a looming budget deficit, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said state leaders need to come up with a long-term plan to help the cash-strapped MTA.
“There’s only three ways: You either do some kind of a tax, or you do congestion pricing, or money falls out the sky,” Heastie told reporters Thursday. “Those are the things we have to look at.” Gov. Cuomo in his upcoming State of the State address is expected to propose a congestion-pricing plan that would impose a toll on motorists entering busy parts of Manhattan, with the revenue raised being dededicated to mass transit for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. While Heastie (D-Bronx) is open to the idea, a number of his members from the outer boroughs and suburbs are not.
Mayor de Blasio has also opposed the idea of congestion pricing. He prefers to increase taxes on the wealthy to help raise needed revenue for the MTA — an idea the Republicans who control the state Senate have shot down. Heastie discussed the issue Thursday during a closed-door meeting with his members at the state Capitol. “I believe that there’s a desire to have a long-term funding plan for the MTA,” he said. “What that is at this point, I don’t know.”
He stressed there is no formal plan or final agreement. “There isn’t anything,’ Heastie said. “There’s just an agreement amongst us as a conference that we have to be mindful of trying to come up with a long-term funding plan for the MTA.” Heastie also warned that with the state facing a projected deficit of at least $4.4 billion, there likely won’t be money to provide major increases to such areas like schools.
“As responsible legislators, we have to first arrest the deficit,” he said. “Whatever things we can do from that point, whether it’s new revenues that aren’t harmful to the state and keeps in mind what the federal government is doing to us, I think we’re going to look at all of those things. “Do I believe this is a year that we’re going to be able to spend billions and billions and billions dollars more? No.”
