Tolls off table in MTA talks
-
- March
- 31
Tolls on bridges into Manhattan are off the table as Gov. Paterson and legislative leaders try to come up with a financial bailout package for the MTA, the governor said today.
“The Senate has really eliminated what my choice would be, which would be to have tolls,’’ he said after emerging from a closed-door meeting with legislative leaders.
Paterson initially backed a plan that would impose a new employment tax on all businesses in the MTA region (including Westchester, Rockland, Dutchess and Orange counties, besides the city and Long Island), higher train, bus and subway fares and a toll on the bridges. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver backed a similar plan.
But Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, couldn’t muster the votes for it because of opposition of some of his members to the tolls. So now, the governor said, the trick is to find some other source for the billions the tolls would have generated.
Absent a bailout plan, the MTA plans to raise fares sharply and cut service starting this summer.
Silver said the leaders are working “desperately’’ to come up with a deal. But nothing yet.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 11:14 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. 
