Transcript: Congestion Pricing Discussion On 'News Forum'

Interview: Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City and Assemblyman Richard Brodsky discuss New York's proposed fees in its anti-congestion program

February 8, 2008

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GABE PRESSMAN, host: New York City's mammoth traffic problems are at the heart of intense debate as a federal deadline approaches for the city to come up with a plan to reduce congestion. An anti-congestion program, passed by a commission appointed by Mayor Bloomberg and other top officials, has to be acted upon by the city council and the state legislature. The controversial plan calls for charging most drivers $8 to go into Manhattan below 60th Street.

Announcer: From Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center, this is a presentation from News Channel 4 HD, NEWS FORUM. Now your host, senior correspondent Gabe Pressman.

PRESSMAN: Should the congestion pricing plan be approved? Our guests today differ sharply. They are Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City, who supports the plan, and Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who is skeptical of the approach advocated by Mayor Bloomberg and the commission.

Welcome to both of you, and good day.

Assemblyman Brodsky, are you willing to give up $354 million in federal money in order to satisfy your concerns?

Assemblyman RICHARD BRODSKY: Well, a bad idea should not be the subject of bribery, and the notion that you'd do something that's wrong in order to get money is not, I think, where anybody ought to be. The question is, is it the right thing to do? It is a terribly bad idea. For the first time in American history, someone is seriously proposing to charge the public for access to a public space, and when you look not just at the concept, which I strongly object to, but the way it's been implemented, it really is a tax on a very sophomore section of New Yorkers, middle-class people from the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Jersey escapes, the Hudson Valley escapes. It's a bad concept and it's been badly executed.

PRESSMAN: But doesn't the traffic congestion hurt the economy of New York?

Mr. BRODSKY: Oh, sure.

PRESSMAN: And hurt the people?

Mr. BRODSKY: We should be doing something about all of that, and we can. Look, we should be doing something about Social Security. It doesn't mean that what George Bush proposed was the right thing. It's one thing to identify the problem--and the mayor's done us all a service by doing that--it's another thing to come up with an unfair, regressive and unnecessary system to--as a solution. It's a--it's a problem we need to address with a bad solution proposed.

PRESSMAN: Ms. Wylde, regressive, unfair, true or false?

Ms. KATHRYN WYLDE: Well, obviously we think that congestion pricing is part of a solution for the 21st century problem. We have the good news that New York City is growing and it's economy has been healthy. We have the bad news that this has resulted in traffic congestion. There's no way to expand our street system. We have a built environment, so we're limited in what we can do. We have to cut down on the vehicles using the roads and bridges, not only in Manhattan south of 60th Street, but in the entire region.

PRESSMAN: But is it fair to people who own cars in Queens and the Bronx and Brooklyn and Westchester, like Assemblyman Brodsky?

Ms. WYLDE: It's only fair if we have a system where everybody is participating. Right now people are paying fares, people are paying bridge and tunnel tolls. But people who are causing significant damage to our economy, who are causing wear and tear on the roads, many of them are paying nothing to drive into the center city during peak periods. We have options in most communities for mass--to use mass transit. We have to improve and expand those options. We have to ensure that every community is served and has access to mass transit. That is the plan. The plan is not simply to put on a charge. It is to invest in a major improvement and expansion of our transit system--more express buses, more ferries, improved services--so that people have the choice and that people who want to drive in or trucks coming in will pay.

PRESSMAN: Are you against all those improvements that she lists?

Mr. BRODSKY: Well, apparently I am. Look, I don't--I take second place to nobody in terms of support for mass transit. I've been there on the bond act, on the capital plans. I don't think I need to go over my record. But when it comes time to funding this go-around, what this commission has done is part of the gentrification of Midtown, where if you have a Chevrolet, it's going to be tough to get in. If you're driving a BMW, it won't be so tough. I would support a plan that...

PRESSMAN: You mean, the rich folks going to be able to do it.

Mr. BRODSKY: Sure. It's not going to matter to the hedge fund guy whether he's paying $2,000 a year more, which is what this tax is. It will matter to the average person coming in from the Bronx or from Queens, who by the way, by the city's own data, average an income of $50,000, the ones who drive in their cars.

Ms. WYLDE: Let me say that I live in...

Mr. BRODSKY: Well, Kathy, let me just--let me just--let me just finish and then you can say what you want. The point is that I do support the things Kathy wants to do--mass transit, congestion--but there are better ways...(unintelligible).

PRESSMAN: OK. You were saying?

Ms. WYLDE: Well, I said I live in Brooklyn and I have a choice. I can drive my car into Manhattan to work, in which case I pay nothing, or I can take the express bus, in which case I pay $9.00 a day. So right now we don't have a fair system. The people who take the bus are paying more and stuck in traffic. The people who are taking the subways, we don't have the resources we need to improve conditions. This program will raise almost a billion dollars between the federal grant that is promised if we pass this by March 31st and half a--half a billion dollars a year in revenues to support the system.

PRESSMAN: Are you ready to give up that money, Assemblyman?

Mr. BRODSKY: As I said, it's a bad idea, and it's not a billion dollars. We can get to the details. But the federal money, if it's a bad idea, I don't want the money. If it's a good idea, I do.

PRESSMAN: Half a billion dollars it's supposed to be.

Mr. BRODSKY: It's actually about 3 to $400 million, and we can raise that in fairer ways. Look, everybody who benefits from the mass transit system should be paying, not just the people who use the roads or that system. We've just seen a fare increase, we've seen toll increases, tuition increases. Where's the contribution of the hedge fund? Of the real estate industry? They get to charge their market rents and make a profit, and that's good, because we have a mass transit system that can get people to work. Why should one segment of our society bear that burden? Until this is fair, I'm not going to support a principle that says, `Well, for the first time in American history, if you want to enter a public space, you have to pay a fee.'

Ms. WYLDE: Richard's argument sounds good, but it's the opposite of the truth. In fact, now, we have a very heavy tax structure on business, highest in the nation, and we are contributing. Many businesses are also providing transit checks for their employees so they can be incentived to use mass transit. What we're missing is we're not charging those who use the roads and the streets on an equitable basis. Trucks, the proposal is, would pay $21 to come in, thinking twice about coming in between 6 and 6 during busy times. Cars that choose to come in will be charged. The proposal of the commission also puts a surcharge on taxi trips within the district.

PRESSMAN: Do you think it's fair, though, to the--to the person who owns a car in Queens or Brooklyn to charge that person for coming in? Isn't that putting an unfair burden on one part of the population?

Ms. WYLDE: Not at all because one way or another, when you're coming into Manhattan, whether you're driving or taking mass transit, you're paying. And many of us are paying bridge and tunnel tolls. People from New Jersey are paying severe bridge and tunnel tolls and soon will be paying more for their--if the governor's proposal goes in--goes through for driving on the turnpike and thruway. We're all having to share the burden of a 21st century society...

Mr. BRODSKY: Let's just...

Ms. WYLDE: ...in which in an urban center, which is dense, two thirds of the regional economy, $900 billion economy, bigger than the economy of Mexico, two thirds of it is located in the eight and a half miles of Manhattan south of 60th Street. That is the source of traffic jams on the Van Wyck, on the Long Island Expressway, on the Jersey Turnpike, throughout--on the--on the Shore Parkway, throughout the region.

PRESSMAN: You're frowning, Mr. Brodsky.

Mr. BRODSKY: Let--well, no, no, no, let's just examine this Jersey business because it's a good example of how the concept, as explained, is one thing and the reality's the other. When this fee, if it's imposed--and I don't think it will be--is imposed, the people of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens will pay the fee. People of Jersey will not. Now, the reason they won't is because they will be able, as Kathy points out, to not--to offset the tolls they pay against the fee. So this new income source will not be paid...

PRESSMAN: Oh, you mean--you mean that the tolls that they pay for using the tunnels and the bridges...

Mr. BRODSKY: Will be deducted from the fee.

PRESSMAN: ...will be deducted.

Mr. BRODSKY: So the funding for a system that the people of New Jersey use will be done off the backs of just a narrow slice of people. What the mayor said he wanted to do, and what Kathy's supporting, is effectively tolling the East River bridges under another name. It is a way to bring revenue in from that group. Now, the problem with that, again, is that these are by and large middle-income people. I agree with Kathy that business is severely taxed in this city. But if we're--but so are regular people. If we're going to go to them for more, we should go to everyone for more or we shouldn't go to anyone for more. Fairness is at the heart of this debate, fairness to the outer boroughs, fairness to middle-class people, and making sure we don't let the people of Jersey get away on a--with a free ride.

PRESSMAN: And you agree that fairness is at the heart of it.

Ms. WYLDE: We totally agree that fairness is the heart, and we believe...

PRESSMAN: Your definition is different.

Ms. WYLDE: Well, it--no, it's not a definition. It is, in fact, looking at the big picture that everyone has to contribute to, number one, our mass transit system. And in fact, we have--the commission recommended that the legislature and the governors work with the state of New Jersey, with the Port Authority, to figure out what is a fair allocation of resources.

PRESSMAN: OK. Let's take a break and come back with an answer from both of you to the question `Will we meet the deadline?' After this. (Announcements)

PRESSMAN: We're back again in a debate about the mayor's congestion pricing plan. And I posed a question at the end of the last segment, which was `Will the city and the state meet the deadline for this that the federal authorities have set?'

Mr. BRODSKY: I hope not. The--this is another George Bush bribe kind of thing where if you take these pricing mechanisms, which are unfair to average middle-class people, and implement them, we'll give you money.

PRESSMAN: Will we meet the deadline, Ms. Wylde?

Ms. WYLDE: I certainly hope so, and I think we're in good shape to do that. We have a large hole in our MTA budget that this would begin to help solve by adding some new services, new buses, new subway stops, a new--a new ferry stop, and I think that there's an opportunity here for us really to get our act together in the region around a better mass transit system.

PRESSMAN: Now, you're a member of the legislature of the assembly. Will the assembly vote to approve this plan?

Mr. BRODSKY: Well, that--well, the members can tell that better than I can, but the speaker has been very careful about making sure...

PRESSMAN: Sheldon Silver.

Mr. BRODSKY: ...there was a fair process. But when the chairman of the commission came to the conference, The New York Times reported quite clearly that he was not greeted well in the sense that the members, I think, shared the view that it was unfair to the outer boroughs. Look, 16 of the 18 assembly members from Queens have signed a letter to Mr. Shaw saying, `We have no interest in this plan.' I think similar patterns are emerging in the Bronx, in Brooklyn and in Staten Island.

PRESSMAN: So you expect the thing to go down.

Mr. BRODSKY: No, I don't have any expectations, Gabe. I think right now it doesn't have the votes. The mayor's a very persuasive man, very rich man. And whether or not it can be changed or modified or improved--but in the end I don't think it's going to go because in the end it's a bad idea, not just a badly executed idea.

Ms. WYLDE: I think it's important to point out that the commission that was appointed by the city council speaker, the mayor, the governor and the four leaders of the legislature came out with a vote of 13-to-2 in favor of a revised plan. It's not the mayor's original plan. It's now a commission proposal with a series of recommendations, some of which haven't been talked about but address the very issues of fairness that Richard has raised. One idea that he actually put on the table is to provide a tax credit for very low-income people that have to use their cars, don't have access to transit or who are patients going to hospitals. And that's some--one of the recommendations of the commission was to ask the legislature to consider that.

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Ms. WYLDE: So I think we have thought about all the exceptions, all the problems, all the issues and put together a very good proposal from the commission that really improves on--of the earlier plan.

PRESSMAN: Now, technically, the way this is supposed to operate, it'll be on the E-ZPass card, so to speak. Now, wouldn't that raise a question of civil liberties? Question of whether or not civil liberties would be violated?

Mr. BRODSKY: It has and...

Ms. WYLDE: But don't we all have E-ZPass now?

Mr. BRODSKY: No, Kathy, there are millions of New Yorkers who either choose or can't afford E-ZPass, and that's the heart of it. Two things, Gabe. It does raise civil liberties issues--concerns. What happens to the data, why are we taking pictures of New Yorkers in the middle of legal daily activities, and do we have to do that?

PRESSMAN: You're taking pictures of the license plates.

Ms. WYLDE: Right.

Mr. BRODSKY: We don't know what we're taking pictures of.

Ms. WYLDE: No, we do, absolutely. I've been to Stockholm and seen the system. IBM, our own company, set up and ran the system in Stockholm, and absolutely you can protect against intrusions. They destroy records immediately. The--it's only a license plate enforcement mechanism. Seventy-five percent of the drivers in New York have E-ZPass already and are already photographed every time they go--their license plates are photographed every time they go through E-ZPass.

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Ms. WYLDE: The privacy issue is really a false issue.

PRESSMAN: Do you agree?

Mr. BRODSKY: No, I don't, and neither does the Civil Liberties Union, and a number of other people have raised these questions. Let's just talk about the E-ZPass thing, because if you don't have E-ZPass, Gabe, you have to self-pay within two days. Now, what that means is you drive into the zone, you have to find a way to get on the Internet or by telephone or somehow and send the money to the city. And if you don't, you're subject to fine of as much as $140. Suppose you're a tourist coming in from Pennsylvania or Kansas. You don't know what's going on. You drive into the zone. You go back to Kansas and you are likely to get 140 to $160 ticket in the mail. They don't know how to collect the fee unless you do have E-ZPass. May...

Ms. WYLDE: This is...

Mr. BRODSKY: Kathy, just a second.

Ms. WYLDE: This has been solved in London, it's been solved in Stockholm. This is not an issue. We have the technology in the 21st century to solve all these problems.

Mr. BRODSKY: Respectfully, the commission recommendation that I voted against was that if you don't have E-ZPass, you have to self-pay or else the city will come after you. That's irrational. What everyone can say about the concept, they gut the state environmental laws. For the first time...

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Mr. BRODSKY: ...there would be a...

Ms. WYLDE: Why is every environmental organization in the city and state in favor of this, then?

Mr. BRODSKY: They're not.

Ms. WYLDE: They are. Name one that's not in favor of this.

Mr. BRODSKY: Well...

Ms. WYLDE: Every health organization...

Mr. BRODSKY: Gabe...

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Mr. BRODSKY: Help me, Gabe.

Ms. WYLDE: ...every environmental organization, every business organization...

Mr. BRODSKY: I--all I want to do is just get my...

Ms. WYLDE: ...are supporting this. This isn't--it...

PRESSMAN: OK, well...

Mr. BRODSKY: But...

PRESSMAN: ...and she raises a legitimate issue, which is why are the environmentalists for it if it's so terrible?

Mr. BRODSKY: Well, I--some environmentalists are and some environmentalists are against it.

Ms. WYLDE: Who's against it?

Mr. BRODSKY: You want organizational names?

Ms. WYLDE: In the environmental community?

Mr. BRODSKY: Yes. I--some of the witnesses who testified, very clearly, are against it, the chairman of the Assembly committee on the environment, among others. But hold on a second.

Ms. WYLDE: Who's that?

Mr. BRODSKY: Kathy, you're going to have to just let me talk here for a minute. Now...

Ms. WYLDE: I don't have to.

Mr. BRODSKY: OK. Please, then. OK. Now, this is--this is what...(unintelligible).

PRESSMAN: I'm ready to jump in, but I see this is a cordial debate.

Mr. BRODSKY: There's a state law--I do, too. There's a state law that says you have to do an environmental impact study before you approve a project.

PRESSMAN: Right.

Mr. BRODSKY: They want to repeal that law and say we're going to approve the project, then do the study.

Ms. WYLDE: That is inaccurate. There's no one calling to repeal that law.

PRESSMAN: OK, now wait a minute. I've lived long enough to know that there was once a $500 million bond issue to build a Second Avenue subway and that money got plundered.

Mr. BRODSKY: Right.

PRESSMAN: It got put into other activities of government.

Ms. WYLDE: And that is, in fact, the real issue and concern. The public has said--60 percent favor congestion pricing if they know that the money is going to improvements that will make our transit better and easier.

Mr. BRODSKY: So in other words, the public doesn't have faith...

Ms. WYLDE: There is lack of faith in elected officials and in the reality of where this money will go. That is the fight we're facing.

PRESSMAN: Credibility.

Ms. WYLDE: It is a credibility problem. It is frustration with the MTA having their own agenda and not being necessarily responsive to a community agenda for years.

PRESSMAN: You agree on that.

Mr. BRODSKY: I fully agree, and one of the reasons I voted against this is there is no locked box here. If you look at the language of the report, it says that the money shall be used, quote, "primarily," unquote, for mass transit.

PRESSMAN: That's a big loophole.

Mr. BRODSKY: It's an enormous loophole. And when I raised it at the commission meeting and asked that that language be changed, the majority of the commission refused to change it. They also give control of the money to the Capital Plan Review Board, which is made up of Albany leaders plus the city council president of New York. That's no assurance the money's going to mass transit. The fact of the matter is this has become a revenue stream debate, not a congestion debate.

PRESSMAN: Now, you do--you do agree on one thing, I perceive, and that is that there is a credibility issue, as well.

Ms. WYLDE: Absolutely. There is a credibility issue, and that is why the commission's report is explicit--it's recommendations are explicit: This money goes 100 percent to transit improvement. The language that Richard's talking about does not--he is not accurately reflecting either the letter or the intention of what is said.

PRESSMAN: How do you enforce this?

Ms. WYLDE: The enforcement--the enforcement is by putting it into a--in the legislation, in the law, it will be restricted to go into a subsidiary of the MTA which will be spending this money. It will have an appoint--it will have appointees from the mayor, the governor. They will--as well as the city council that will be participating in making sure. And there is going to be a plan because it's going to be part of the budget, the MTA plan. The plan and the items and improvements will be identified and in place before we start congestion pricing.

PRESSMAN: But couldn't there in the future--saying that there's good faith on the part of all the current officials, couldn't there in the future be collusion among all these safeguard people?

Ms. WYLDE: Only if our legislators want to override their own law after the fact.

Mr. BRODSKY: Kathy, do you dispute the report says that the use of the money should be primarily for mass transit?

Ms. WYLDE: I do dispute that. That is not what the report intends to say at all.

Mr. BRODSKY: OK. I'll get that to you, Gabe.

Ms. WYLDE: I know the primary language you're talking about and it's not and it is--that is a distortion.

Mr. BRODSKY: It doesn't say "primarily"?

Ms. WYLDE: The word "primarily" is in the report. It's a long report.

PRESSMAN: OK, let's come back in just a moment with a kind of a summery of the situation as it stands now on congestion pricing, after this. (Announcements)

PRESSMAN: We're again discussing the controversy over congestion pricing. Ted Kheel, a former--or still, I guess, in a way, a retired lawyer of mine and a good friend--that's the disclaimer--he's come up with an idea to make all the subways and buses free and thereby attract so much business to the heart of the city and reduce congestion by having people ride mass transit. Do you think that's a feasible scenario, Ms. Wylde?

Ms. WYLDE: Well, as--I would say that it is an ideal scenario. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. I think that everybody is going to have to pay their fair share, that the folks who take transit pay fares and that everybody else pay, too. That's the idea of the congestion pricing proposal, that everybody participate.

PRESSMAN: Well, his idea is that so much money would be generated, you know, in tax revenue and so forth, that it wouldn't be necessary to charge...

Ms. WYLDE: Well, but he's proposing...

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Ms. WYLDE: He's proposing far higher fees than $8 a day.

Mr. BRODSKY: He's done something interesting and important. He's reminded us that maybe the way to change behavior is to incentivize people instead of punishing them. And I think that's the heart of what Ted's talking about that makes so much...

Ms. WYLDE: Yeah, I agree.

Mr. BRODSKY: ...makes so much sense.

Ms. WYLDE: The incent--the incentives are important.

Mr. BRODSKY: And it's--since it's more broadly based, it's fairer and I think it would work. The problem, of course, is that we're in an era, Gabe, where if you call it a fare increase or a toll increase or a fee, you can do it. If you call it a tax, it's bad. We have adopted the rhetoric of the Reagan, Karl Rove, Cato Institute theory about public finance. If we're, as elected officials, going to try to fund services, we've got to find ways where everybody pays, not just, as in this case, largely getting the money from middle-income people in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. That's the heart of the fairness debate.

Ms. WYLDE: But if it's a tax, there's not room for incentives.

Mr. BRODSKY: And it's, again, one of the reasons why I think this thing will not advance.

Ms. WYLDE: If you call it a tax, then--I mean, a tax doesn't--one, that's the worst of all worlds because then all the money can go into the general revenue budget and we lose control. Tolls and fees can be dedicated, and we want this money dedicated. It has been shown that the public will support this investment in transit. They will support congestion pricing if we guarantee that it's dedicated to transit improvements that will benefit them. And that's what we have to see. So we can't treat it as a tax. It--we can't go the tax route. We've got to go the user fee and toll route.

Mr. BRODSKY: You can dedicate a tax with the same amount of power that you can dedicate a fee. The--part of the problem here for the business--some sections of the community is that they found a revenue that they don't have to pony up for. And that's, again, at the heart of the fairness issue. Where is the...

Ms. WYLDE: Well, who's paying? Is it the middle class or the business community that's paying the tolls? I mean, who's paying the tolls?

Mr. BRODSKY: The toll would be paid largely, the city data says, by people from the outer boroughs who make $50,000 a year or less.

PRESSMAN: I'll give...

Mr. BRODSKY: That's the heart of it.

PRESSMAN: ...give you 30 seconds to sum up your point of view or less. I think 20 seconds.

Mr. BRODSKY: It's essentially--it's an un-American idea to start charging for public spaces. It gentrifies downtown. It continues that. We're going to be a community where if you've got a BMW, you can come, if you've got a Chevy, you can't.

PRESSMAN: Ms. Wylde, quickly.

Ms. WYLDE: If we're going to overcome the issues of global warming, of traffic, of the cost of congestion, we are going to have to make some big 21st century decisions. This is the first step in that direction.

PRESSMAN: Thanks very much to both of you. And that's it for NEWS FORUM for this week. Gabe Pressman here. See you next time.