
Gov. Cuomo & MTA Chair Prendergast (photo: Philip Kamrass, Governor's Office)
Governor Andrew Cuomo has made mass transit a major focus of late, holding a series of events over the past year regarding airport redevelopment, railroad expansion, new transportation hubs and vehicles, and more. Early last month he described the Metropolitan Transit Administration (MTA) as a new “personal priority” and announced an effort to modernize the agency, beginning with the purchase of over 1,000 new subway cars.
This, with the accompanying significant funding allocation toward the MTA, is something of a change of course for Cuomo, who has a history of diverting money from the MTA. Now, the governor’s ambitious transit plan includes updating the MTA, repairing tunnels and bridges throughout the New York metropolitan area, building a new Tappan Zee bridge, rebuilding LaGuardia Airport and Penn Station, and creating a new tunnel under the Hudson river.
With federal corruption convictions having toppled two recent leaders in the state Legislature, among other former Albany lawmakers, and investigations into his own administration, Cuomo appears to have seized on a concrete, quality-of-life issue in mass transit that has also been brought into focus by the dire state of the state’s transportation infrastructure.
Cuomo’s commitment came after calls from transit advocates, business people, and lawmakers urging the governor to allocate funding to the MTA’s five-year Capital Program in the state’s budget to meet the staggering needs outlined by the authority. After spending $1 billion in the first year of the Capital Program last year, Cuomo agreed to provide an additional $7.3 billion last fall. New York City will provide $2.5 billion, and the MTA, a state body whose chair is appointed by the Governor, will itself provide $17 billion.
Cuomo did not finalize the spending plan for the Capital Program until late May, but has widely publicized his support of the program since. The state’s contribution to the Capital Program is included in the Fiscal Year 2017 budget, providing $2.9 billion in the coming year on top of the $1 billion provided in Fiscal Year 2016.
At a June event celebrating groundbreaking at “the new LaGuardia Airport,” Cuomo put the magnitude of his “$100 billion infrastructure program” on display, calling it “the largest reinvestment in New York’s infrastructure in modern history,” which, he said, was “long overdue.” A key part of it, the governor said, “is a $27 billion investment, largest capital investment in history in the MTA because that is going to be the future. Moving more and more people through mass transit rather than through cars and I am proud to be the governor who made the largest investment in the MTA’s history.”
While some transit advocates view the governor’s recent embrace of the MTA as a victory, not all are reassured by the promise of capital funding.
“It was a great win in many ways that the governor said he would allocate the necessary funding at least this year to the capital plan,” Masha Burina, an organizer for the advocacy group Riders Alliance, told Gotham Gazette. “But our major concern going forward that we still have and that we're going to be pushing for in our campaign is to get a sense of where this money is coming from.”
Burina said the push to secure budgetary funding for the Capital Program was aided by Assembly member James Brennan, a Democrat from Brooklyn, who penned a letter signed by 35 other Assembly members and sent to Cuomo in February. However, Burina added that Cuomo has not detailed how the state will pay for the capital program.
Without a new source of funding, the state—or the MTA—will have to borrow. The MTA is already over $35 billion in debt. Because one of the only revenue generators within the MTA’s control is passenger fares, Burina said she is worried going further in debt would make a looming fare hike to $3 even more likely (the current cost of a subway or bus ride is $2.75).
But the Fiscal Year 2017 budget stipulates that the state can only provide its share of the funding via a revenue stream or direct payments, which means no debt related to the state’s contribution to the Capital Program can be passed on to the fare-payer, according to Morris Peters, a spokesperson for the New York State Division of the Budget.
Peters also touted the $3.9 billion state contribution already signed into law as part of the past two years’ budget, pointing out that this places the state ahead of schedule in providing its $8.3 billion pledged contribution.
“Through the Enacted Budget, the state’s commitment of $8.3 billion in new funding for the MTA is now law. Anyone who thinks this isn't a priority clearly doesn't know what they're talking about,” Peters said in an email to Gotham Gazette.
Nonetheless, transportation advocates are likely to continue questioning where exactly the money is coming from and pressuring Cuomo as they have in the past, urging the governor to find ways to pay for the capital plan, according to Burina.
“It's great that he's come out and stepped up saying that these are his priorities, but we want to make sure that this doesn't translate into unsupported debt borrowing,” Burina said.
Several possible options for funding exist, but none have yet been embraced by the governor. One possibility is raising motor fuel taxes, which brought in $503 million for the state last year. But Nicole Gelinas, the Searle Freedom Trust Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said raising the gas tax is unlikely to provide enough funding for the Capital Program.
“I don't think we'll get much from a higher gas tax,” Gelinas said in an email to Gotham Gazette. “We could double it, and take in another half billion [dollars], but that doesn't solve the MTA's problems.”
Increasing motor fuel taxes has not been endorsed by Riders Alliance and has drawn skepticism from elected officials who support increased transportation spending, especially since motor fuel tax revenue is expected to decrease by $9 million in the coming year.
“All our public policy is, quite properly, aimed at saying ‘use fewer gallons of gasoline.’ We want to be more energy efficient, we want to have less fumes and we want to have more miles per gallon,” Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic congressman from Manhattan, said at “On Transportation,” a forum hosted by City & State NY at the New School on Tuesday. “So the amount of revenue in real terms from the gasoline tax is going down steadily, and we have to substitute for it.”
Riders Alliance has, however, endorsed the Move NY Fair Plan, which would increase tolls in areas of high transit availability like major East River bridges and decrease tolls in areas of low availability, including bridges over the Harlem River. But the plan would generate “only” one billion dollars per year for transit projects through 2019, as well as $375 million per year for road and bridge improvements during that time.
“The Move NY is a much better plan, except that even it is not a panacea,” Gelinas said by email. “It buys us the debt for one five-year capital plan, at most. But we're now two years into that five-year capital plan. So what do we do in three years' time?”
As advocates continue to push for a source of funding for the MTA, Riders Alliance hopes to use Cuomo’s “prioritization” of transit to gain momentum for more specific causes they’ve spearheaded in recent months, including compiling a plan to support commuters affected by the L Train’s upcoming closure, subsidizing fares for low-income New Yorkers, and updating the subway signaling system, which would allow for expanded countdown clocks and more trains per track.
And while some have been bolstered by Cuomo’s pledge to be an advocate for transportation, others are less satisfied. New York State Senator Leroy Comrie, a Democrat from Queens who serves on the Senate’s infrastructure committee, said that regardless of its sources of funding, the Capital Program neglects parts of his constituency.
“I represent Southeast Queens, which is a transportation desert. The MTA five-year capital plan addresses no solutions for Queens other than repair and maintenance of the existing bridges that are there,” Comrie said at the City & State forum on Tuesday. “The project for LaGuardia was necessary and important, there’s no access for our community to actually get to work.”
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by Aaron Holmes, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette

Green Party candidate Jill Stein (photo via Facebook)
With the Republican and Democratic parties having nominated presidential candidates with record-high unfavorability ratings, this election cycle is turning out to be a choice between a rock and a hard place for many voters. Some, though, are looking elsewhere and still-early polling shows that this November could yield near-record voting for so-called “third party” candidates.
Those who oppose Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton say she’s an untrustworthy, calculating politician with cozy ties to corporate interests and Washington insiders; opponents of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, see him as a sexist, fear-mongering, racist xenophobe with authoritarian tendencies. Though the United States has a political system dominated by two parties, Clinton and Trump aren’t the only choices, much to the relief of a number of voters. What that number winds up being could determine the election, the next President, and much of the future of the country and the world.
The third-party candidates in the 2016 race for the White House are the Libertarian Party’s nominee Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s candidate Dr. Jill Stein, both of whom ran in 2012 and are now going all out to woo those disaffected voters who believe that neither Clinton nor Trump is a viable choice for President of the United States. While no expert would argue that either Johnson or Stein will be the next President, voters choosing one or the other on November 8 could determine whether the next President is Trump or Clinton.
This year’s presidential election is likely to once again come down to several key swing states, and polls in some of those states, like Ohio and Florida, show a close race between the two leading candidates. (In at least one national poll, Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, polled in double digits, but in other polls both he and Stein were in single digits - a candidate needs to hit an average of 15 percent in five national polls to be invited to a debate.) There is concern for some that one or both of the third-party candidates could be a spoiler for Clinton in a swing state or two and skew the election in Trump’s favor. While the likelihood is minimal, experts say, it not entirely implausible.
A Real Clear Politics poll average has Trump at 41.5 percent in Florida, against Clinton’s 41.3 percent while Johnson takes 4.5 percent and Stein takes 2.5 percent of the vote. In 2012, President Obama beat Mitt Romney by just 74,309 votes or 0.88 percentage points in Florida. In Ohio, Clinton bests Trump by 1.4 points on average thus far; Johnson gets 6.4 percent and Stein gets 3 percent. In 2012, Obama won by 2.98 points in the state. In New Hampshire, a four-way contest has Clinton and Trump tied at 37 percent according to a WMUR Granite State poll; with Johnson at 10 percent and Stein at 5 percent. Obama won the state in 2012 with 52 percent of the vote, against Romney’s 46.4 percent.
Both Stein and Johnson have been encouraged by the high unfavorable ratings of Clinton and Trump. A Gallup poll conducted July 18-25 found that Clinton and Trump had equal favorability marks: 37% favorable and 58% unfavorable. Some believe the 2016 dynamics could create a situation similar to the 2000 presidential election, when famous third-party candidate Ralph Nader took votes away from Al Gore in Florida, the state which gave George W. Bush the presidency with a razor thin margin.
Nader addressed those concerns in a recent interview with the New York Daily News, insisting that a third-party candidate shouldn’t unjustly be termed a “spoiler” and laying the blame instead on the media, the voters, and the candidates themselves. A Florida-like situation is exactly what former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was trying to avoid when he abandoned plans of running for president as an independent earlier this year. He didn’t want to run the risk of helping elect Trump, he said, something he affirmed by speaking at the Democratic National Convention in favor of Hillary Clinton and calling upon independents to vote for her.
The most recent CBS News poll had Clinton at 41 percent and Trump at 36 percent, with Johnson receiving 10 percent of the vote. Stein was not mentioned in the poll. Among independents, however, Clinton trailed Trump by 2 points, and Johnson received 15 percent of the vote.
A new CNN/ORC poll taken after the close of the Democratic National Convention shows independents favoring Clinton, with a 37% plurality, Trump with 33% of independents, Johnson wiht 16% of independents, and Stein with 8% of independents.
Gallup polling shows that 42 percent of registered voters identify as independents. While at this juncture in the election cycle about one-third of independents may say they favor a ‘third-party’ candidate, support for such candidates tends to drop as the general election gets closer. (The latest Real Clear Politics polling data averages put Johnson at 7 percent and Stein at 3.2 percent.)
“One primary struggle in a year like this,” said John Hudak, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, “is not that voters are in love with third-party candidates. They’ve fallen out of love with the major party candidates.” Hudak contrasted Ross Perot’s insurgent candidacy in 1992, when he ran as an independent. “Perot did quite well because people liked his message. He was inspiring people. Stein and Johnson are not providing any inspiration for voters.”
Hudak doesn’t expect that the third-party candidates will have a significant influence and that people disillusioned with Clinton and Trump will more likely stay home on Election Day than vote for Stein or Johnson. Even in swing states he said the effects of a third-party candidate would be difficult to attribute and would likely have minimal impact on the outcome.
No one discounts, however, the strong possibility that third-party candidates will get a higher vote share this year than past elections. Stein appeals to Democratic voters, particularly former Bernie Sanders supporters who felt betrayed when the Vermont senator dropped out of the race and endorsed Clinton. Last week, outside the Democratic National Convention, she made attempts to win over ‘Bernie or Bust’ protesters who had walked out of the main arena. She has proposed a “Green New Deal,” a platform that skews closely to Sanders’. It includes single-payer health care, forgiving student loan debt, transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable and sustainable energy, breaking up the big banks, and fighting income inequality, to name a few main planks. Stein has also built some name recognition. She ran in 2012 and received about 469,000 votes, which she’s hoping to build on this year. There were a few more than 129 million votes cast that year.
Although Libertarian Gary Johnson (pictured) has been seen as more of a threat to Trump, on social issues his policies correlate closely with Sanders, again perhaps offering a home for voters supportive of Sanders but not attracted to Clinton. Johnson, who also visited Philadelphia during the DNC, favors legalizing marijuana, is pro-choice on abortion, and supports marriage equality. In a recent interview with Politico’s Glenn Thrush, Johnson said of Sanders, “On the social side, we’re simpatico.” Johnson has also received more media attention than Stein and has a record as former (Republican) governor of New Mexico. When he ran for president in 2012, he received about 1.28 million votes.
Johnson’s other policies are far flung for Democrats. As a Libertarian, he wants smaller government that has a minimal role in people’s lives, not just on social issues like marriage and abortion. He wants to get rid of the entire tax code and institute a consumption tax nationwide. He wants to cut the Department of Education.
Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian National Committee, told Gotham Gazette that Johnson is an easy choice for voters as the “honest guy” running against a “bigot” (Trump) and a “liar” (Clinton) who are historically unpopular. He’s not concerned that Johnson could pull votes from Clinton and hand Trump swing states. Although if that should happen, he said it falls at the feet of the voters and not the third-party candidate. “You’re supposed to vote for who is best for the office,” he said. “Not who you hate more or less.”
Part of the struggle for both Johnson and Stein, neither of whom was made available for an interview for this article, will be getting on the debate stage, which is crucial for third-party candidates to build name recognition and get media attention. The Commission on Presidential Debates, however, only allows candidates polling 15 percent in national polls to participate in the debates. So far, Johnson seems more likely to hit the mark. “They’re going to have a very hard time getting sufficient attention to register with voters,” said Micah Sifry, executive director of Civic Hall and an expert on third-party candidacies, in a phone interview.
Sifry doesn’t think the election will be as close as the 2000 race and doesn’t see a high likelihood that a third-party candidate could give the election to either Trump or Clinton. At best, he said, Stein and Johnson will split 6 percent of the vote between them. He does see Johnson receiving votes from disaffected Republicans and from the 10 percent of Sanders supporters who “were probably never Democrats in the first place.” He also said Stein could do better in strong “blue” states, which are overwhelmingly Democratic and “where people feel it’s a safe protest vote.”
Gene Healy, vice president of the Cato Institute, echoed Sifry’s views on the debates. “The name recognition on the national stage that access to the debates provides can be transformative,” he said, pointing out that Ross Perot in 1992 had only 7 percent of the vote in the polls before the debates and jumped to nearly 19 percent. Perot was added to the debate roster because George H.W. Bush’s campaign insisted on it, which Healy said was in hopes of tilting votes in Bush’s favor. “It can really rocket a former unknown into contender territory,” Healy said.
Healy said it was “certainly plausible” that third-party candidates could affect swing states since Trump and Clinton, “are the most widely reviled major party candidates in the history of polling.”
Should Johnson and Stein make themselves better known between now and November, they may at least drive voter turnout and encourage alternative discussion of issues on the campaign trail. “That’s part of a healthy phenomenon,” said Sifry. “You want people to have more choices. You want the major parties to fight for their votes. They shouldn’t take people for granted.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette

New York City Hall
What to watch for this week in New York politics:
With both the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention now over, the presidential race hits the final three-month stretch to Election Day, November 8. The first debate in scheduled for September 26. While New York was front-and-center at both conventions because the two presidential candidates call the state home, a great deal of attention will now shift to the most consequential swing states, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Still, Republicans are saying that they think Democratic strongholds like New York could be in play this year due to the unique nature of the Donald Trump candidacy.
As for New York city and state politics, Mayor Bill de Blasio begins August with work to do in terms of the popular narrative around his leadership of the city and with several investigations hanging over his administration and campaigns. De Blasio has been out of town for most of the past two weeks - on vacation in Italy and then at the DNC in Philadelphia - and will now dig back into the community outreach and promotion efforts he'll need in order to improve his standing among New Yorkers. De Blasio starts the week with a press conference celebrating gains New York City students made on this past school year's standardized tests for grades 3-8 (scores were released Friday afternoon) - see below for details.
De Blasio is continuing to deal with fallout and criticism around the removal of deed restrictions on a property on the Lower East Side, which is becoming high-end condos after it had been previously restricted to a non-profit health-care facility. Last week saw more information released after the city's Law Department relented to the city's Department of Investigation, which had said that the Law Department had withheld key documents from the DOI. This week starts with Comptroller Scott Stringer releasing the results of his own investigation - see below for details.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has no public events on his Monday schedule.
Overall, it looks like another relatively slow summer week - the City Council has no public hearings again (committee hearings will resume next week, with a full-body Stated Meeting scheduled for August 18) - but there are several events to be aware of. See our day-by-day rundown below.
***Do you have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics?
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The run of the week in detail:
Monday
On Monday at 10:30 a.m., Gotham Gazette's Ben Max will appear on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show to discuss the New York angles to the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Also at 10:30 a.m. Monday, Assembly Member Michael Blake and community leaders will hold a press conference at 1 Police Plaza: "On Saturday, July 30, 2016, Assemblymember Michael Blake of the 79th District in the Bronx was involved in a confrontation with New York Police Department officers. Assemblymember Blake states that officers used excessive force against him while he was trying to diffuse a tense situation between police and members of the community. Assemblymember Blake wants to provide his account of the unjust incident and demand transparency and action from the police department."
At 11 a.m. Monday, Mayor de Blasio and schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña will host a press conference at Tweed Courthouse to discuss New York City students' scores on the most recent state tests, for the 2015-2016 school year.
"On Monday, August 1, at 12:30 PM, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer will hold a press conference at the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Lower Manhattan to release an investigative report on the sale of two deed restrictions governing the property located at 45 Rivington Street in Manhattan."
Tuesday
On Tuesday at 8 a.m. at the New School, City and State will present “On Transportation,” a forum bringing together industry professionals to discuss the future of New York transportation policy and infrastructure. Key speakers will include Matthew J. Driscoll, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Transportation, Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, Chair of the Council’s Committee on Transportation, Senator Leroy Comrie, and State Assembly Members Robert Rodriguez and David I. Weprin.
At 11 a.m. Tuesday at Brooklyn Borough Hall, BP Eric Adams will host the New York City Smart Gun Symposium, “the largest-to-date gathering on advancing smart gun technology.” The event is co-sponsored by Washington Ceasefire and New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, and will include New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg and former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officer David Chipman. Discussion will center around the latest advancements in smart gun technology and their potential role in reducing gun violence nationwide. Public Advocate Letitia James will give remarks.
At 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in Manhattan, Gov. Cuomo will make an announcement.
On Tuesday at 1 p.m. in Manhattan, "Chancellor Fariña will attend a professional development session for “SEP Jr.,” which is the first school-wide elementary school computer science program in New York City and will launch in schools this fall."
At 2 p.m. Tuesday in Manhattan, "Mayor de Blasio will deliver remarks at the annual New York State Financial Control Board meeting."
At 6 p.m. Tuesday, the Brooklyn Borough Board will hold its monthly meeting.
Events will be held all around the city Tuesday to mark America’s National Night Out Against Crime. Elected officials all over the city will be participating in community events involving local precincts.
Wednesday
A At 9:30 a.m. Wednesday in Queens, Borough President Melinda Katz and District Attorney Richard Brown will host a forum on hate crimes in partnership with the NYC Commission on Human Rights and NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force. Discussion will center around “the role of law enforcement when a hate crime occurs and how we work to protect the community.”
At 10 a.m. Wednesday in Albany, the state Assembly Committee on Economic Development, Job Creation, Commerce and Industry will hold an oversight hearing to review the implementation of the FY17 budget and its impact on the state’s economic development agencies and programs.
Thursday
On Thursday evening Brooklyn, Comptroller Scott Stringer will host a town hall meeting, according to Brooklyn Eagle, which reports the event will be "at the New York Aquarium Education Hall at Surf Avenue and West Eighth Street in Coney Island," that Stringer is holding it "in partnership with U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, state Sen. Diane Savino, Assemblymember Pamela Harris and Councilmembers Chaim Deutsch and Mark Treyger," and that it "is open to all, but will focus on issues of concern to residents of Southern Brooklyn, according to the Comptroller’s Office." Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Friday and the weekend
Nothing on the calendar as of the start of the week for the end of the week.
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Have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics? E-mail Gotham Gazette executive editor Ben Max any time: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (please use "For Week Ahead" as email subject).
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by Amanda Sherwin and Ben Max
@GothamGazette