Not Splitting the Check on MTA Repairs, the Mayor Tells Albany

ALBANY, N.Y. — Mayor Bill de Blasio’s annual pilgrimage to make New York City’s financial case before skeptical state legislators in the Capitol usually follows a predictable pattern: He asks for money; Republican lawmakers scoff.

But on Monday, de Blasio was the one rebuffing calls for increased spending, as he repeatedly rejected state officials’ calls for the city to contribute more money to the deteriorating subway system.

On what has become known as Tin Cup Day, de Blasio doubled down on the positions he has articulated many times in the past weeks and months. No, New York City would not pay for half of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $800 million emergency plan to rehabilitate the subways. No, he would not support a proposal to create special tax districts around new subway developments. Yes, he still preferred a millionaires tax over congestion pricing.

And over the course of 3 1/2 hours, state lawmakers interrogated him on those positions — sometimes gently, sometimes not.

“You today have said several times that the city is not legally responsible for the capital costs of the MTA,” Sen. Catharine Young, a Cattaraugus County Republican and chairwoman of the Finance Committee, said. “I would say to you, Mr. Mayor, that those statements are not correct.”

“With deepest respect, I absolutely disagree with your legal interpretation,” de Blasio replied.

“I’m reading from the law, Mr. Mayor,” Young interrupted.

Kemp Hannon, a Republican senator from Long Island, dismissed de Blasio’s proposal to tax the wealthy in order to raise money for subway repairs and reduced fares for low-income riders.

“You’re going to need suggestions,” Hannon said. “The millionaires tax — which probably isn’t even alive on arrival, being dead at the beginning — we need many more suggestions than we’ve heard.”

De Blasio repeatedly pointed out that people who live or work in New York City contribute 70 percent of the agency’s revenue, and that the city directly gives $10 billion each year. But Republican lawmakers pointed out that of the agency’s $30 billion capital program, the state has agreed to fund about 30 percent, and the city less than 9. Indeed, many of the questions and answers revolved around a numbers game, with both the mayor and state legislators quoting the statistics that most supported their point that it was their side that bore the brunt of the subway’s financial burden.

At least two legislators asked for a straightforward breakdown of what portion of the agency’s funding came from the state and what portion from the city. Both times, de Blasio did not answer directly, instead reciting the $10 billion statistic or warning in more general terms about the “sea change” effect of shifting capital funding costs to the city.

“You’re talking about tens of billions of dollars in shifted expenses, which is an insupportable number,” he said.

On Monday morning, while de Blasio was testifying, the Senate’s Independent Democratic Conference, a group of Democrats who collaborate with the Republicans, released a survey in which they said 75 percent of city subway riders supported the city paying for half of the subway action plan.

And the city’s comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, testifying immediately after de Blasio, told the state legislators that he, too, favored more city contributions to the subways.

“We are not looking for a handout,” he said.

Of the proposal to create special tax districts on developments near transit expansions, an idea known as value capture, de Blasio said such a move would “blow a hole in the city’s budget” and allow the state to raid the city’s property tax revenue, forcing him to cut back on vital services such as education or public safety.

Dani Lever, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press secretary, said the city could block the formation of any special tax district it did not want by vetoing the capital project associated with it.

De Blasio also repeatedly insisted that he would not support any congestion pricing plan that did not include a “lockbox” legal guarantee that any revenue generated would go only toward New York City’s subways and buses.

“That would be a situation that would be very damaging,” he said, “if we all agreed on a revenue vision and then woke up to find the money went elsewhere.”

De Blasio has surely come to expect the verbal manhandling that accompanies these joint budget hearings. In 2016, Young highlighted the city’s surplus as evidence that de Blasio did not need any more state support; on Monday, she returned to that theme. In 2017, Sen. Simcha Felder of Brooklyn brought a loaf of bread and a carton of eggs to mock the mayor’s proposal to charge a 5-cent fee for plastic bags. (Felder reassured de Blasio on Monday that he had not brought any props this time.)

Legislators also berated de Blasio for poor conditions in the city’s public housing complexes and for his refusal to enact a property tax cap to which other municipalities statewide are subject. Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, R-Staten Island, who ran against de Blasio in November, made a show of examining her own property tax records against de Blasio’s, noting that she paid nearly $2,000 more in property taxes each year even though his home was worth nearly three times more.

For his part, de Blasio criticized parts of the executive budget that would shift financial responsibility for charter schools to the city, and that would cut funding for special education and affordable housing. The mayor has been open in his criticism of Cuomo’s proposed budget, even lumping together fiscal threats from Albany with those from Washington.

After the hearing, the mayor and the governor, who are famously at loggerheads, met privately for nearly an hour and a half. As he emerged from the governor’s office, de Blasio said the meeting had been “good.”

Strained attempts at diplomacy were evident during the hearing, too. While de Blasio at times could not hide his frustration with the grilling, he tried — at least in his words if not in his tone of voice — to maintain a note of optimism.

“I don’t buy the conventional wisdom of what is viable here in Albany and what’s not,” he said as he looked at the dozens of state legislators arrayed imposingly above him in the hearing room. “I’m going by what I think is the best outcome.”