Judge Allows Congestion Pricing Petition to Proceed

In early June, Governor Hochul announced a “pause” in the Congestion Pricing Program scheduled to proceed on June 31. As we discuss in this issue, this move eliminated $16.5 billion dollars from the Capital Budget of the MTA for the 2024-2025 Fiscal Year, which the MTA used to immediately stop work on all subway accessibility projects other than those funded prior to 2024.

A number of organizations, pulled together by Comptroller Brad Lander, including the City Club of New York, the Riders Alliance and Earh Justice (an environmental group) brought suit to force the program to proceed.

On September 27, after extensive argument in front of Judge Arthur Engoron, the judge denied a Motion to Dismiss the case. His language made it clear that the governor had an uphill battle to extablish that she had authority to do what she did. The judge stated that at this stage, it looked to him that the governor’s role, if any, was to direct the State Transportation Department to issue a final sign-off on the plan, a sign-off which he called “ministerial.” He rejected the argument that the governor had discretion about whether or not to proceed because the Legislature and Governor Cuomo had enacted the Transportation Mobility Act, which mandated that Congestion Pricing be implemented if it was properly vetted through an Environmental Impact Study by the federal government.

Frankly, Governor Hochul’s argument, which was that she had discretion about whether or not to implement any law, had a very Trumpesque ring. In doing this, the governor displayed an arrogance which we didn’t even hear from her disgraced predecessor Andrew Cuomo.

The next argument will probably be in mid to late November. Queen Hochul may have her scepter taken away as a Christmas present. And maybe we will have fewer cars mucking up our air.

—Arthur Z. Schwartz