As Friday’s state budget deadline looms, New York’s supposedly transit-friendly Democrats are punting on transit.
Neither the Democratic governor nor the Democratic majorities in the Legislature has shown any sign of treating the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s multibillion-dollar deficits seriously.
With ridership around two-thirds of pre-COVID levels, the state-controlled MTA is in trouble.
Before COVID, fares covered 38% of its then-$16.7 billion budget. (Dedicated taxes on everything from petroleum to Uber rides in Manhattan, plus bridge tolls, covered another 48%, and the state and city made up the rest.)
With the budget having reached $19.2 billion, and with fares having fallen from $6.3 billion in 2019 to a projected $4.6 billion this year, the MTA faces big gaps.
Even after a proposed 4% fare hike later this spring and finding $100 million in “efficiencies” (increasing to $400 million next year), the MTA has a 2023 budget hole of $650 million, rising to $1.3 billion next year.
What to do about this is not hard.
Use this time to make the MTA’s budget as efficient as possible.
The Post’s Nolan Hicks has found nearly $400 million in annual efficiencies at commuter railroads.
And the subway and bus union, the Transport Workers, could propose savings for its contract that expires in May.
The MTA and the union could split averted costs, half for management and half for workers, over the new contract.
Instead, the governor’s first move was to propose an $800 million tax increase on the working and middle class — that is, increase the 0.33% tax on nearly all downstate payrolls to 0.5%
To their credit, both the Senate and the Assembly rejected the governor’s massive tax hike.
Even progressives realize this tax is bad news: Small-business owners see this cost every time they do their books.
If you run a hair salon in, say, Garden City, with a half-million-dollar payroll, you have to pay $1,700 to the MTA each year, even though none of your workers or customers arrives by transit.
But don’t give lawmakers too much credit.
The Assembly wants to make up the difference with a massive increase in a different corporate tax, a 28% increase on the surcharge on downstate businesses with more than $5 million in income, to 9.25%.
This, when New York is one of the only states not to have recovered its pre-COVID jobs, with nearly 46,000 private-sector positions, or 0.5%, still missing.
Legislators’ other ideas show less seriousness. Senate Democrats want to force New York City to charge people to park on residential streets.
Even if you think this a good idea, this is the worst way to go about it.
Albany does not control our streets.
The mayor does because city taxpayers, not Albany, maintain local roads. Any realistic plan would have to come from the mayor and the City Council, with the revenues going to the city.
Lawmakers also want to impose an extra 50-cent fee on Uber and Lyft passengers.
This slapdash idea ignores the fact the MTA is already set to charge Uber and Lyft riders in core Manhattan more (beyond the $2.75 surcharge they now pay), as part of Albany’s congestion-pricing program, supposed to start next year.
But even though Albany’s congestion-pricing law for the MTA is four years old, the MTA still hasn’t told anyone what that new congestion charge on Uber and Lyft will be.
So we’ll get another new charge — when we don’t even know what the old new charge is going to be?
Worst is the Assembly’s plan to slap an 8% tax on streamed movies, TV shows and songs.
Merits — or demerits — aside, this is a poison pill. Assembly members know the governor wants to avoid any direct tax hike on the middle class, especially one so visible as a fee that shows up every time you watch a film.
Who do Assembly Democrats think is watching “Wakanda Forever”in bed, billionaires?
This is a bluff. The state budget is due in less than a week — so the fact that lawmakers are bluffing isn’t a great sign.
The MTA will either get a total disaster of a package — even worse than all the above — hashed out in secret. Or it will get nothing — and will threaten service cuts and double-digit fare hikes.
It seems Albany’s only plan for the MTA is total chaos.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
