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How The Mayoral Control ‘Special Session’ Works


de Blasio desk Albany

(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


To prevent the lapse of mayoral control over New York City schools, Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday called an “extraordinary session” of the state Legislature to convene on Wednesday at 1p.m. in Albany. Often referred to as a “special session,” details of how the day will unfold -- especially what legislation will pass -- are still unclear.

Currently, the session has been called for just one day, with the only named purpose the extension of authority granted to the New York City Mayor, currently Bill de Blasio, to run the city schools. But, as of Tuesday evening, there is no specific bill on the table and Cuomo’s proclamation leaves the discussion open to “such other subjects” he “may recommend.”

"The Governor is calling an extraordinary legislative session for Wednesday, June 28 to take up the issue of Mayoral Control. The Governor has discussed the extraordinary session with the legislative leaders,” said Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, in a statement.

The failure to reach a deal by the end of the week would lurch the educational system for 1.1 million city schoolchildren into uncertainty, and the process would commence to revert school governance back to the Board of Education and local school boards -- which, while in power, were frequently charged with inefficiency and corruption.

Like most educational experts, Governor Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie have all expressed support for mayoral control and believe that the old school board system was worse. But, the GOP-controlled Senate want to tie an extension to an increase in the cap on charter schools in New York City. The Assembly wants a clean extender of mayoral control, but did tie it to other local extenders in the form of expiring tax rates that also have widespread support.

On Wednesday, the three men will meet again try to break the impasse over the issue, and perhaps negotiate other policies, while reporters try to glean some insight into the negotiations. After breaking last Wednesday night at the end of the scheduled legislative year without deals on mayoral control, local tax extenders, or several other high-profile items, legislators, some of them on vacation, are being called back to the capital to handle unfinished business.

A majority is needed in both houses for the session to commence, and it is the responsibility of the legislative leaders to compel their members to return to the Capitol, according to Cuomo’s office.

According to Albany lore, the executive can call in state troopers to force lawmakers back to the Capitol for a special session. This myth, cited by several legislative staffers, does not appear in the state constitution. Senate rules do require a quorum, or 60 percent of members to be present for any motions or resolutions, and empower those present to send the Sergeant at Arms to bring absent senators back from their districts if necessary. In post-session remarks this past Thursday, Cuomo did jokingly reference constituents using force to send their local legislators back to Albany to finish their business.

While special sessions are sometimes intended to tackle a single topic, The New York Times reported that the governor may be offering the Senate GOP approval of a bill to increase accidental disability pensions for firefighters, police officers, and other city employees in exchange for a sign-off on one year of mayoral control without charter school provisions attached. This has opened the door to lawmakers and interest groups who want to see other bills considered in renewed negotiations.

Also caught in the crossfire, is a standard two-year extension dozens of local and county taxes. If it lapses, counties could face a $1.8 billion collective hole in their budgets, according to the New York State Association of Counties. Like with mayoral control, virtually all the major stakeholders believe in an extension, but disagree on the details of a deal.

Now NYSAC is calling for the Legislature to tackle legislation that would permanently allow county governments to extend their sales tax rates every two years.

Senator Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, wants the special session to include action on New York City’s rapidly deteriorating subway system, following a particularly dramatic derailment incident Tuesday morning, which left dozens of straphangers injured. Just before the end of the scheduled session Gianaris had put forth a new proposal for a temporary dedicated revenue stream to infuse cash into the MTA.

“With the state legislature likely to return to Albany soon to address outstanding issues, fixing the MTA should be a top priority. When they return, the Governor and members of the legislature should not leave the Capitol until a solution to the MTA crisis is enacted,” wrote Gianaris in a petition for lawmakers to consider his bill to establish a dedicated funding stream for emergency maintenance and repairs.

While only the governor sets the agenda for a special session, his power is limited.
Technically, the Legislature never gavels out of session. According to the state constitution, if the Assembly goes dark for four days consecutively, lawmakers cannot reconvene until the following calendar year.

So, for more than two decades, every third day, an Assembly member has entered the chamber, and triple-banged the gavel on the podium -- a ritual that keeps the Legislature endlessly in session. This practice is intended to prevent recess appointments by the Governor and also allows any new legislation to age the requisite three days before becoming law.

Since the legislative session never really ends, when a special session is called, the Legislature must return to Albany, but can immediately gavel out and go home. Its members can also stay and reconvene to consider legislation of their choosing.

The Legislature first turned over control of city schools to the Mayor in 2002.
Previously, they were governed a seven-member Board of Education and 32 elected community school boards. The Board of Education, which had two mayoral appointees and one each from the borough presidents, selected the chancellor. The mayor could also influence the school system through the city budget.

Authority to appoint superintendents in elementary and middle schools was stripped from the Board in 1996 due to evidence of corruption and patronage in some school districts. Since this shift test performance and graduation rates dramatically improved at city schools, reports The New York Times.

Without clear direction, the session can get expensive.
Compensation, per diem allowances and travel expenses for members can add up, not to mention the cost of additional legislative staff. There are 150 seats in the Assembly and 63 in the Senate. It’s not clear how many legislators will be back to Albany for Wednesday’s session.

Legislators are paid a per diem rate of $175, which is to cover hotel and food, plus they are compensated for travel expenses at 55 cents per mile, not including tolls. For a lawmaker from Buffalo, which is approximately 300 miles from Albany, the travel bill tallies up to around $150 each way, for example. There is also a partial per diem rate of $59 when lawmakers do not spend the night.

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by Rachel Silberstein, State government reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Note: This article has been updated to clarify how lawmakers are gathered back to the Capitol during a special session.

5 Reasons Mayoral Control is on the Verge of Lapsing


de Blasio Albany dark

Mayor de Blasio in Albany (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Mayor Bill de Blasio’s control of the New York City school system is only good for the rest of this week. The state Legislature ended its scheduled legislative session last Wednesday without a deal on an extension, something Governor Andrew Cuomo called “dereliction of duty,” and de Blasio has said puts the futures of 1.1 million schoolchildren at risk.

The New York Times reported Monday night that Cuomo is calling the Legislature back into special session "as early as Wednesday" in order to pass a one-year extension of mayoral control, perhaps offering state Senate majority Republicans a pension sweetening bill they had previously sought but not the expansion of charter schools in New York City that had held up negotiations with the Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats allied with the teachers unions, which see charter schools as an existential threat.

If the state Legislature does not reconvene and vote through an extension by Friday, June 30, the law will lapse and governance of the city’s schools will revert back to the old Board of Education system that was in place until 2002, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg won mayoral control through Albany.

Perhaps instructive for the coming months, there was a brief period in the summer of 2009 when mayoral control lapsed due to chaos in state government, but it was restored before the start of the next school year. While Bloomberg received seven and six years of mayoral control in 2002 and 2009, de Blasio has received back-to-back one-year extensions leading into this year, in large part because of tensions with Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, and the Senate majority.

De Blasio is largely allied with the Assembly majority, though not all members of that conference are fully supportive of mayoral control and it walked away from the bargaining table because it does not want to approve more charter schools for the city.

The situation has become a test of Cuomo’s leadership and reputation for getting things done.

According to the mayor and many others, circumstances are dire.

“I could not express the urgency more,” de Blasio said on Friday during an interview with Politico New York from the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami, Florida. “1.1 million children's lives and education and future depends on it,” the mayor said. “There are still differences clearly...there are things that need to be worked out, but my message to everyone is we've got to get this done by June 30, and that the results of not getting it done by June 30 are that we start back down a road of a system that failed our children.”

De Blasio has pointed to successes of the past 15 years overall, like much higher graduation rates, and of his three-plus years in office, like the implementation of universal pre-kindergarten, as evidence that mayoral control works. He’s also repeatedly pointed to dysfunction, corruption, and a lack of clear accountability under the old Board of Education system, which also involves 32 locally elected school boards.

De Blasio said Friday that “the action will begin in earnest again on Monday and I'm going to be talking to all of the key leaders on trying to settle all of the differences and getting this done.”

On Monday evening, de Blasio told NY1’s Errol Louis that his message to state lawmakers is “come back and get to work and finish this...get back to Albany and get this done.”

A spokesperson for the mayor told Gotham Gazette that “Our team has been in constant contact with the governor's team and the legislative leader teams. We are optimistic a deal can get done. We're working around the clock to help that process with whatever we can.”

De Blasio said Monday night that he had spoken to Gov. Cuomo earlier in the day and that the governor was “optimistic” a deal would get done. The mayor said he wouldn’t be confident until legislators were headed back to Albany to vote on a deal. Cuomo may be making that happen.

On Sunday, Cuomo said he was hopeful that a deal will be reached this week. Yet, the governor has repeatedly voiced an understanding that some think de Blasio is not an effective steward of the city’s schools. Cuomo said last week that he is a supporter of mayoral control under de Blasio, but added, “I understand the opposition, the questioning of the mayor's management and competence and record, I get it, but, what's the alternative, right?”

Though there is a home rule discussion to be had, at this moment it is prudent to put aside the questionable fact that state legislators, especially those from outside New York City who dominate the Republican-controlled state Senate, get to determine the city’s school governance structure. It may be a discussion worth resuming after a mayoral control extension is reached.

Whether a deal is reached this week or not, this summer or not, mayoral control is currently on the verge of lapsing for a wide variety of reasons and fingers are rightfully being pointed in several directions -- just about everyone involved is due some blame.

Though Cuomo and legislative leaders could announce a deal this week, if not the city may have to at least go through the motions, as in 2009, of reconstituting the more decentralized Board of Education (two appointees by the Mayor, one each by the five Borough Presidents) and beginning to eye elections for 32 community school boards. As the mayor has warned, there could very well be a chaotic period, with a lot of time, energy, and money dedicated to reestablishing a system that would likely be temporary.

While the chorus is mostly singing another tune, there are some who say that mayoral control should be done away with, and that the Board of Education system, perhaps with a few tweaks, is more apt to respond to community concerns and that local school boards give communities more control over their schools. The most powerful people in the room, however, do argue that mayoral control is a stronger governance system for the city’s 1,700 schools and 1.1 million students.

As Cuomo has pointed out, there are very real disagreements over charter schools, de Blasio’s management, and even the overall system itself. It’s apparent that the always politically potent issue of charter schools has been the main sticking point in negotiations over mayoral control: Cuomo and the Senate majority want room for more charters in New York City in exchange for an extension of mayoral control, whereas the Assembly majority is against expanding charter schools further. (Cuomo and Senate Republicans are heavily funded by charter school supporters, while Assembly Democrats and de Blasio are heavily funded by the teachers unions, who oppose charters.)

According to the New York Times, the bill Cuomo is seeking to move during Wednesday’s special session would not include raising the cap on charter schools in New York City, despite the fact that Cuomo supports such a move. There is still room under the current cap for about two dozen more charters to be authorized.

The five key reasons that mayoral control is on the verge of lapsing:

1. Governor Cuomo has not negotiated a deal.
This could all change Wednesday. But, perhaps because he is no ally of Mayor de Blasio or because he is a strong supporter of charter schools, Cuomo did not get a deal done before the end of the scheduled legislative session. The governor said he was in regular contact with de Blasio over several days, but that a fundamental difference between the Assembly and Senate majorities led to a stalemate. “Mayoral Control is a fundamentally controversial topic,” the governor said at a news conference last week in Albany.

“I was very involved with the mayor, I spoke to him multiple times a day for multiple days, I spoke to people on his team, I spoke to the Senate, I spoke to the Assembly, worked very hard until late in the night to try to get it done, and there's fundamentally no agreement between the two houses,” Cuomo said.

2. Mayor de Blasio is unliked in Albany and does little to improve the situation.
The mayor has few allies in state government, and his closest allies -- Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and his majority members -- have mixed feelings about mayoral control. De Blasio is loathed, though, by Senate Republicans, especially given that he got very involved in 2014 efforts to oust them from power. As is well-documented, Cuomo and de Blasio do not get along, and the governor is never in a rush to help the mayor. But, Cuomo and Senate Republicans do believe in mayoral control of city schools, which may be the only reason de Blasio has held on to control.

All told, it’s not a great situation for the mayor, but he has done little over the past three years to improve it. He is hesitant to contact Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, he makes few trips to the capital (three this year in the first six months), and he often does not put the effort into building and maintaining relationships with members of his own party, including Assembly members. The Cuomo situation is well-documented, but the mayor and the city continue to suffer due to the poor relationship. While it may be more Cuomo’s fault than de Blasio’s, the mayor has still not figured out to get more of what he wants with the governor’s help.

3. Assembly Democrats oppose charter schools more than they like mayoral control.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie decided not to give in on an expansion of the cap on charter schools in New York City, so mayoral control is on the verge of lapsing. Assembly Democrats are extremely close with the teachers unions, who see largely non-unionized charter schools as an existential threat.

Heastie was steadfast in saying he refused to link charters to mayoral control, but his brinkmanship may soon see a compromise. There are still 23 slots under the current charter cap for New York City, which charter advocates including Cuomo have been calling for a total elimination of for years, so it may not be that Heastie has to agree to a higher cap. Politico New York recently reported that Heastie may have to just sign off on new rules around charter teacher regulations. However, it’s unclear if his sign-off is even needed for them to go into effect.

As Cuomo recently said, de Blasio is also no fan of charter schools, though he has reached something of a detente with the sector after major battles in 2014. “[I]t's a different equation, supporting it with Mayor de Blasio who’s an avowed opponent of charter schools,” Cuomo said last week when discussing why the Senate GOP was less enthusiastic about mayoral control under this mayor, as opposed to Mayor Bloomberg, who was a major charter school supporter.

4. Senate Republicans are playing with house money.
The Senate majority has little reason to give in on mayoral control without getting something in return. Only three of the conference’s 32 members are from New York City, with Majority Leader Flanagan hailing from Long Island. If there is disarray in city school governance it doesn’t matter much to the conference and they get the bonus of watching de Blasio suffer. Republican senators are in excellent bargaining position given that there is room under the charter cap and mayoral control is on the verge of ending.

Still, there is some pressure on the Senate majority since it does need a good working relationship with the governor and, to some extent, the Assembly majority. Flanagan and Cuomo have had a very solid working relationship, including Flanagan signing off on Cuomo’s signature issues each of the last two years (a minimum wage hike and paid family leave in 2016; a college affordability program and raising the age of adult criminal responsibility this year), and Flanagan introducing the governor’s bill late on the last night of session that would name the new Tappan Zee Bridge after late Governor Mario Cuomo. Assembly Democrats did not pass the naming bill, but could agree to do so as part of a future deal.

5. The IDC has not helped make a deal.
The Independent Democratic Conference, or IDC, is a group of eight breakaway Democrats led by Senator Jeff Klein of the Bronx that has a power-sharing agreement with the Senate GOP, helping the majority to bolster its razor thin hold on the chamber. While the IDC supports mayoral control, it does not appear it has been able to influence its Republican colleagues to move on a bill. The IDC may not have tried given that it is also supportive of charter schools. Charter backers have been generous donors not just to the Senate GOP, but to the IDC, which helps keep charter-friendly Republicans in control of the chamber, which is seen as essential to charter survival and growth.

Part of how the IDC rationalizes its existence is by saying that it can help moderate the Senate GOP and move legislation that may otherwise be bottled up, like the minimum wage increase of last year or the Raise the Age bill this year. But, mayoral control does not appear to have made that list.

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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New Jersey is About to Elect a New Governor. Why It Matters to New York


Cuomo Christie NY NJ

Governors Cuomo and Christie (photo: Governor Cuomo's Office)


After competitive primaries, the New Jersey gubernatorial race is now between Republican Kim Guadagno and Democrat Phil Murphy. As the candidates head toward November's Election Day, New Yorkers may want to pay attention to the race and how each major party candidate might affect New York if elected.

Given the proximity and relationship between the two states, particularly in relation to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the fact that New York's workforce includes many New Jersey commuters, the next governor of New Jersey will have significant sway over key infrastructure, transportation, economic, public safety, public health, and other decisions that affect New Yorkers.

The Port Authority emcompases the Newark, JFK, Stewart, and LaGuardia Airports as well as the PATH train, bus terminals, bridges and tunnels, and the ports themselves, and gives the governors of both New York and New Jersey shared responsibility over interstate transportation. Both governors have the ability to select individuals for the Board of Commissioners, and reject any actions by them.

A variety of matters have led transportation to become a key part of the discussion in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, and it is one that has essential ties to New York.

"It's good that transit is such a big issue in this race, and it's a big difference from when [New Jersey Governor Chris] Christie first won," said Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute. "First of all, no one talked about transit issues in the gubernatorial race when Christie was running against [Jon] Corzine - no one quite appreciated the crisis that was looming, even though it was pretty predictable."

Christie canceled the ARC (Access to the Region's Core) project in 2010 in an effort to save taxpayers the weight of paying for it, after projections by the Federal Transit Administration found that the nearly $10 billion needed to complete it could have gone up almost 50% by the time the project was finished. The precursor to the Gateway Program, ARC would have built a new tunnel under the Hudson River and a new station near Penn Station, after it was decided that connecting the new tunnel to Penn's failing infrastructure was impossible.

"Whoever is the new governor is coming into a state with serious, serious problems," said Gelinas, whose focus areas include infrastructure, transportation, and fiscal policy. "[New Jersey] never recovered from the recession, the pension funds are really insolvent, and transit is one of these big problems."

"People are aware of this, but they're still not being told they are going to have to pay a lot more in taxes to fix this huge infrastructure backlog," Gelinas said.

Many New Jerseyans help strengthen the New York economy; those who work in New York pay income taxes here, and New York businesses depend on area transportation to deliver consumers from a wide area. New Jerseyans take advantage of New York attractions, including sports, parks, landmarks, arts, and culture.

Along with shared control of the Port Authority, the two governors must be able to cooperate during a crisis, such as in the case of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. In the aftermath, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and Christie, a Republican, came together to issue a joint statement on the "inexcusable" "continued inaction and indifference by the House of Representatives" to send aid, 66 days after the storm had hit.

Governor Cuomo's office declined to comment on the importance of the working relationship between the New York Governor and the New Jersey Governor. Cuomo and Christie have largely gotten along, with Cuomo refusing to criticize Christie over ARC or as Christie supported Donald Trump's candidacy. In 2014, Christie, as head of the Republican Governor's Association, refused to help Cuomo's Republican opponent, Rob Astorino.

Cuomo and Christie have not appeared together in public much in the last year-plus, but have repeatedly appeared to have a friendly relationship, including when they responded to the Ebola scare in 2014.

The Candidates
Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy has a policy agenda 28 items long, including issues such as "Getting Tough on Gun Violence," "Making the Economy Work for All of Us," "Lowering the Cost of a College Education," and what appears to be a major focus of the race, "Ending the Mismanagement and Building a World Class Transportation Infrastructure."

Specifically, part of Murphy's plan for transportation includes increasing investment by the state to "lower the burden on consumers" as well as completing the Gateway Project.

"If we don't get the economy right, we don't get New Jersey right, and that's the overwhelming central thesis of our campaign, and will continue to be," Murphy said on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show on June 7. "We have to grow this economy, and we have to make this economy and our society fair again," he said.

He went on to stress that his administration would be both progressive and fiscally responsible. "California has proven that," he said, also citing Minnesota and Massachusetts. Murphy has been endorsed by former Vice President Joe Biden, who called this election the "single most important" impending vote, according to Politico.

Murphy previously served on the board of the NAACP, served as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, and helped launch The New Start Career Network, a group  that "provides free, personalized assistance to New Jersey residents, age 45 and over, who have been unemployed for six months or more." According to his website, as governor, Murphy plans to "increase oversight" of the Port Authority and NJ Transit, as well as complete the Gateway Project.

Murphy's media representative did not respond to requests for an interview discussing his campaign and the New Jersey-New York connection.

Republican Kim Guadagno, Chris Christie's 2009 running mate and Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey, lists "Improving Education," "Cutting Property Taxes," "Making New Jersey More Military & Veteran Friendly," and "Fixing Pension and Health Benefits," "Audit Trenton," and "Growing Jersey Jobs" as her entire list of issues on her campaign website.

Guadagno has no mention of her plans for fixing transportation infrastructure listed on her website.

"It's too expensive to live here," Guadagno said on the same WNYC program. "Going into November our whole conversation is going to be about how it's too expensive to live here - we have to make it more affordable. We cannot raise taxes on the most taxed people in the country and we have to lower those taxes."

Guadagno made a pledge that if as governor she could not lower property taxes in the state, she would not run for reelection. She also condemns higher gas taxes, which Gelinas says could be the difference in being able to afford the infrastructure changes necessary for New York.

Guadagno's media representatives could not be reached; no one answered the phone number listed on her website (that had a full voice mailbox) and no email is listed.

Transit Issues
Dubbed the "Summer of Hell" by officials with Long Island Rail Road, according to the New York Times, starting July 10 people using the Penn Station transit hub on Manhattan's West Side (which faces New Jersey) will begin to see the effects of around 30 years of neglect. The station will be cutting down on a fifth of its regular traffic while necessary renovations are underway.

Penn Station transports more passengers than any railroad station in North America, with over 600,000 commuters passing through every day either through the many different train services that pass through it. Many of these passengers consist of New Jerseyans who commute in and out of the city for work, some who have left the Empire State for the Garden State in an effort to find more affordable housing.

New Jersey Transit "is New Jersey's public transportation corporation." With over 5,000 square miles, it is the "third largest provider of bus, rail and light rail transit" in the country, connecting major areas like New York, Philadelphia, and New Jersey.

Among other places, NJ Transit operates out of Penn Station, as does the Long Island Railroad, or LIRR, the most used railroad in the country by commuters, "carrying an average of 301,000 customers each weekday on 735 daily trains." LIRR is run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which is dealing with its own crisis.

"The MTA is in a state of crisis," wrote Governor Andrew Cuomo in a recent statement that also gets at the New York-New Jersey transit relationship. "Historic underfunding leaves it with obsolete equipment going back to the 1940s. The bureaucracy is dysfunctional. The recent Penn emergency track closures on July 8 will be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. The July 8 LIRR and New Jersey Transit cancellations will drive more people into the subway system, in the middle of the summer. There is no quick or small fix for the MTA. We are advancing $32 billion for the MTA capital plan – an historic amount – but it must be implemented: new cars purchased, new signals installed, new equipment acquired and new personnel hired."

Cuomo and Christie also worked together to send a letter to Charles Moorman, the CEO of Amtrak, on May 11 calling for "systemic changes" that "cannot wait," and which placed blame for the "continuing string of infrastructure failures at Penn Station" on Amtrak's "decades of underinvestment." However, some experts feel the blame is not entirely off of the governors themselves.

"One of the first things Christie did in office was to cancel the Hudson tunnel, that would have given New Jersey transit a lot more independence from Amtrak and a lot more reliability," said Gelinas. "He really did that for short-term points with his voters and [to say] 'Oh look, I'm saving money.'"

"He didn't think of the long-term repercussions at all," Gelinas said, "and so now we're seeing the long-term repercussions, and that's good at least that people are aware of this - that they're thinking about this more seriously now. As for the letter that Cuomo and Christie sent to Amtrak...it's kind of a distraction."

Greg David, columnist for Crain's New York Business and director of the Business & Economics Reporting Program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, agreed, saying, "Everything that is going wrong there is the result of the two men's inattention to this. Amtrak has become a convenient scapegoat for their own mistakes - not that Amtrak hasn't contributed, but it's the most hypocritical thing."

The total cost of building that new tunnel is estimated at around $20 billion, half of which is supposed to be supplied by the federal government, while the other half is split between New York and New Jersey. Since Cuomo is responsible for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said David, and Christie is responsible for "starving" NJ transit for money, citizens should be questioning the actions of all major parties involved.

And it isn't just Penn Station or the current Hudson tunnel, referred to as the North River Tunnel (which was severely damaged during Superstorm Sandy) that is in a state of crisis; the bus terminal responsible for commuters between the two states also needs significant refurbishment, and bus traffic could become more consistent in the years to come.

"The 42nd Street Port Authority Bus Terminal is the world's busiest bus terminal," said Philip Plotch, professor and director of the Masters of Public Administration Program at Saint Peter's University. "But, it's falling apart and it can't fit all the people and buses that want to use it."

The key place the Governors of New York and New Jersey interact, according to David, is at the Port Authority where they have "equal control." According to Plotch, the 42nd Street bus terminal is a "weird dynamic" in which it resides in New York but is more important to New Jerseyans, since not many of the people who use it are New Yorkers.

"Everybody agrees that either you knock it down and build a new one, or you totally rebuild it," said Plotch. "New Jersey thinks it should be totally knocked down and started from scratch, New York is trying to not put as much money into it."

Though not as important to New York voters, said Plotch, the bus terminal is important to New York businesses that rely on people from New Jersey both as employees and customers. "In New Jersey, it's the opposite," said Plotch, because New Jersey businesses are always trying to take back business from New York, whereas New Jersey voters who work in New York would rather have the problems fixed.

How the winner will impact New York
"So what about these two candidates? I would say that [Guadagno] doesn't have much of a serious plan yet," said Gelinas. "I mean, she said she wants to do an audit of New Jersey transit and the state transportation trust fund - that's fine - but she doesn't have much of a funding plan [for the tunnel]."

"I think Murphy has been a little bit more serious in saying that New Jersey transit needs a huge infusion of money," Gelinas continued. "He said he'll look at considering a new tax for the agency, but he also just talks about the federal funding for the big Hudson River Tunnel Project."

Ultimately, however, Plotch says there's no way to tell exactly who will have what effect until it happens, citing the difference between politicians during a campaign versus how they act in office as the reason voters never really know what they're getting.

"Neither of them is saying [they] are going to be raising taxes or borrowing a huge amount of money to make the improvements that are necessary," said Plotch. "No politician wants to go and say 'we need to raise gas taxes more' or 'we need to raise tolls more' or 'we need to raise fares more' or 'we need to borrow, even though we're one of the most heavily indebted states.' Nobody's going to do that on the campaign trail."

It remains unclear who is going to end up footing the bill for all of the needed infrastructure improvements, and how that bill will be split among New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. Which gubernatorial candidate would best figure out that funding equation for New Jersey is also not clear, especially given that relationships are essential, both across the Hudson and with federal leaders.

"No matter who wins, we need to get going on the funding package for this Hudson tunnel," said Gelinas.

Gelinas also said as far as New Yorkers go, unless there is a candidate willing to say "Washington is not going to pay for this, we're going to need to come up with this $5 billion, and we will have to pay more for our infrastructure," that there will be room for even more concern.

"If we don't see that," she continued, "then I think New York can worry a huge chunk of its workforce coming from New Jersey and providing a lot of Manhattan's workers, is still going to be unpredictable, with unproductive, unhappy workers."

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by Jynn Schubert for Gotham Gazette
@JynnWasHere  @GothamGazette

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