{"id":257210,"date":"2021-05-24T04:44:37","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T01:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/andrew-yangs-clueless-plan-to-take-over-the-nyc-subway\/"},"modified":"2021-05-24T04:44:37","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T01:44:37","slug":"andrew-yangs-clueless-plan-to-take-over-the-nyc-subway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/andrew-yangs-clueless-plan-to-take-over-the-nyc-subway\/","title":{"rendered":"#Andrew Yang\u2019s clueless plan to take over the NYC subway"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Andrew Yang\u2019s clueless plan to take over the NYC subway<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Andrew Yang wants to seize control of Gotham\u2019s subway and bus system from Gov. Cuomo \u2014 something that will never happ<\/a>en. There is nothing wrong with suggesting things that won\u2019t happen. But the way Yang is going about it is a reminder that though it\u2019s good to have a fresh face in politics, \u201cfresh\u201d shouldn\u2019t mean \u201cignorant.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week, Yang re-unveiled one of his signature proposals: \u201cThe plan is to take the case to Albany and the people of New York that the mayor should have control over the way that most New Yorkers get around.\u201d The good arguments for this are familiar, because City Council Speaker Corey Johnson proposed them while contemplating his own mayoral run.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It makes democratic sense for officials closest to residents to be accountable for a critical public service. Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg made the same point 20 years ago, in taking over the schools. And it makes practical sense for the same agency that controls bus lanes(the city Transportation Department) to control the actual buses. But\u00a0Yang\u2019s proposal makes no sense on a fiscal and political plane.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The subways and buses don\u2019t fund themselves with passenger fares. In a normal year, they take in about $4.4 billion, nearly half their revenues, from a slew of state taxes. There\u2019s a petroleum tax, a tax on downstate payrolls, a sales tax and on and on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The state Legislature and various governors have approved these taxes over 40 years, and they\u2019ve done so because the state maintains control. Why can\u2019t the city levy these taxes itself? Yang\u2019s transit adviser, James Rubin, said last week that is what would happen. \u201cThe point is not to unwind the operating revenues,\u201d he said. \u201cThe actual flow of revenue is not gonna change one bit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this gets to the fundamental tension between city and\u00a0state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city (when it isn\u2019t in a historic pandemic that has cost it hundreds of thousands of jobs) has lots of economic power, since it has the jobs and the people. But the state maintains political and fiscal power. Aside from the property tax, the city can\u2019t impose any tax itself; it needs Albany\u2019s permission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The state would never give the Big Apple autonomy over a huge swath of taxes, because then the city, combined with its natural economic power, would be far more powerful than the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mayor really would be more powerful than the governor, which no governor wants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then there is what would happen to the MTA\u2019s $49.4 billion in debt, most of which is for city projects. Would the city guarantee it? The city then wouldn\u2019t have money for its own important projects, like rebuilding the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A candidate hellbent on taking over transit despite these obstacles has a couple of options.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He could propose a 10 percent surcharge on property taxes to fund transit. (This actually makes some policy sense, as property can\u2019t go anywhere, and the value of property depends on functional transit.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Candidate
NYC mayoral candidate Andrew Yang rode the subway from Canal Street to Times Square on the \u201cN\u201d line.<\/figcaption>
Gregory P. Mango<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Or he could assert a city right, not a state right, to impose congestion pricing. Some smart lawyers have long claimed that the city could call congestion pricing a fee, not a tax.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Yang didn\u2019t suggest those things \u2014 and he seemed unaware of basic transit realities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is fine not to know all the intricacies of MTA debt. But he didn\u2019t seem aware that the toll money from the Triborough and other bridges and tunnels is supposed to go along with the transit system, since \u00ad\u201cextra\u201d money from bridge crossers in cars helps defray transit deficits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also said he needed to control the transit system to control subway crime. It\u2019s laudable that he wants to cut crime \u2014 but the mayor already fully controls transit police.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These hurdles existed when Johnson suggested much the same thing in 2019. But two things were different.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, Johnson\u2019s staff, in a 104-page report, indicated a fluency of the fiscal and political issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, we didn\u2019t have a pandemic. Right now, the transit system, with 40 percent of pre-COVID passengers, is running \u00aditself reasonably well, thanks to massive federal funding. The biggest deterrent to rebuilding ridership is crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Candidates should be focused on bigger emergencies \u2014 not on setting up their first six months in \u00adoffice for a humiliating loss to \u00adCuomo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor of City Journal.\u00a0<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Andrew Yang\u2019s clueless plan to take over the NYC subway” Andrew Yang wants to seize control of Gotham\u2019s subway and bus system from Gov. Cuomo \u2014 something that will never happen. There is nothing wrong with suggesting things that won\u2019t happen. But the way Yang is going about it is a reminder that though it\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/05\/yang-2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[106908,70430,79087,71452,71454],"class_list":["post-257210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-5-23-21","tag-andrew-cuomo","tag-andrew-yang","tag-mta","tag-subways"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}