Flickers of life in congestion-pricing issue?
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- July
- 18
For those looking for any flicker of life in the congestion-pricing issue: Gov. Eliot Spitzer today cancelled a trip to Buffalo so he could participate in on-going negotiations.
Maybe another faint flicker: federal Department of Transportation spokesmen, who have been besieged by New York media wanting to know if New York City’s chances of getting $500 million from Washington to help implement the program to reduce traffic in Manhattan by charging fees for driving there are truly dead, have been stonewalling. That may indicate some flexibility in their final decision over what cities get the money. The supposed “drop-dead’’ date for state approval of a plan to submit to Washington was Monday
OK, one more: Spitzer has always thought that a pay raise for legislators was his trump card, and that issue is part of the negotiations.
Lawmakers haven’t had a raise since 1999, and it would be easier for them to establish a commission this year to consider the issue than to have to vote on it next year, close to the election.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 9:54 am by Jay Gallagher.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
[...] wait, are there Flickers of life in congestion-pricing issue? Maybe, according to veteran Albany correspondent Jay [...]