Just a few months after Gov. Andrew Cuomo forced the city to foot half the cost of emergency subway repairs, he is now demanding that Mayor Bill de Blasio cough up more than $18 billion to help pay for long-term fixes in the system.
Cuomo said the city has the money to split the costs of a planned massive overhaul of the subway system, which is expected to cost about $37 billion over 10 years.
“Fifty-fifty. Let’s solve it. Let’s stop arguing. Fifty-fifty,” the governor said during an unrelated press conference on Thursday when asked how much the city should pay for the plan. “I don’t think there’s anything more reasonable than fifty-fifty.”
Cuomo has said that the state took over paying for the subway years ago when the city was in financial crisis, but now that the coffers are flush, it should pay its share.
City officials said the governor’s request is ridiculous.
“After failing miserably to secure a sustainable revenue source, we knew the governor would be back for more,” said de Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips. “The mayor has contributed a record amount bailing out Governor Cuomo’s subway mismanagement. Rather than constantly asking for more from all our riders and taxpayers, the governor should pass a millionaire’s tax to fix the trains he’s run into the ground.”
Transit advocates skewered Cuomo’s statements, saying he’s not taking responsibility for the subway.
“Governor Cuomo controls the MTA. He also dominates the state budget process, the only legal mechanism that can raise the tens of billions of dollars it will take to fix the subway,” said John Raskin, executive director of the Riders Alliance. “The MTA now has a modernization plan but the governor still hasn’t put forward a funding plan for the Legislature to vote on, and riders continue to suffer through regular breakdowns and delays.”
Gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon also took the opportunity to knock the governor over his words.
“Straphangers are sick of this political blame game,” she said. “It is the governor’s legal responsibility to fund the subways. Period. But instead of accepting his responsibility, Andrew Cuomo tries to place the blame on everyone else, including, now, the taxpayers.”
Cuomo and de Blasio fought for 10 months over whether the city should pay $418 million for half the cost of MTA Chairman Joe Lhota’s Subway Action Plan, a program launched a year ago to staunch delays.
Cuomo finally asked the state Legislature to pass a law requiring the city to pay and the de Blasio administration coughed up the cash.