Rockland County, it seems, is a place where dreams come true. It’s an area of New York state where unicorns prance among leprechauns and genies ready to grant everyone three wishes abound. It also seems to be an area where fiscal reality and financial responsibility are concepts unheard of in legislative life.
To wit, take a peak at this recent article in The Journal News. It is entitled “Lawmakers vow to oppose MTA fare hikes, service cuts,” and that’s only half of it. Take a look:
Rockland’s state delegation ripped into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to implement a wide range of service cuts and price increases to cover a $1.2 billion deficit. Everything from New York City buses and trains to bridges and tunnels to commuter trains and ferries would be affected. Locally, Metro-North Railroad riders would face a 20 percent fare increase.
Broke and broken seemed to be the dominant theme of the day.
“We are united in our fight against the MTA’s outrageous spiking of fares and business taxes that really will impact negatively on the Hudson Valley, and particularly Orange and Rockland counties,” state Sen. Thomas Morahan, R-New City, said.
The three Republicans and two Democrats said they would oppose a proposal that would levy a new MTA payroll tax and would raise fares and tolls by 8 percent. The tax would cost Rockland employers more than $18 million a year, the Rockland County Business Association and the Rockland Economic Development Corp. have estimated.
So let me get this straight: In the space of about 140 words, Rockland County’s bipartisan group of representatives noted that they oppose MTA service cuts and fare hikes and they also opposed a new payroll tax that would potentially alleviate much of these proposed fare hikes and the vast majority of the service cuts. That is mindbogglingly terrible political pandering.
I’d love to ask the Rockland representatives what their master plans are for funding the MTA. After all, these services aren’t free, and the money has to come from somewhere. They don’t want service cuts and fare hikes, the MTA’s only internal way of cost control, and they oppose dedicated funding via payroll taxes, a powerful external way of keeping service cuts and fare hikes at bay.
Logic and reality, it seems, has no place in Rockland County.
6 comments
This is not about logic and reality. This is about going on the record with a faux-populist position so that when election time comes around, these pols can claim they fought the good fight, even if it is silly and futile.
Logic and reality have never set foot in Rockland County up until, so why do you expect a sudden outbreak of common sense for this?
Rockland has some of the worst transit options of any of the NYC suburban counties. Rockland commuters can take a West of Hudson Metro-North train, or the have to drive into Jersey or across the Tappan-Zee or Bear Moutain Bridges to get a Hudson Line M-N train at Peekskill or Tarrytown. I think there’s also a dinky little ferry from Haverstraw over to Ossining’s station, but it’s hours of operation are terrible and it doesn’t hold many people (passengers only, no cars).
Thus, Rockland politicians are stuck in this traditional quandrary where they need to pander heavily to automotive commuters by always opposing Tappan-Zee birdge toll hikes AND scrambling to hold on to what little mass transit services they do have. The car commuters and Rockland centric employers don’t want to pay for services that they don’t think benefit them (a fallacy, true, but still that’s their line of thinking) and the few mass transit commuters are pretty damn vocal.
Politicians aren’t paid to actually fix problems, they’re paid to keep people happy. Thus, they’ll say whatever it takes to keep people happy, and usually do nothing, because doing something is going to back someone angry.
And this is precisely why good journalism keeps democracy alive. A good newspaper would be saying politicians need to come up with a way for funding or accept service or fare hikes.
I kind of agree with them. Why should we foot the bill for their mismanagement and pathetic planning? The MTA should be receiving way more federal funding then it is, The big issue there was what to do with all of our new federal Homeland security money, How about not giving that money to podunk cities out in the desert and fund something useful like the MTA.
The big issue when I lived out in Arizona…
Josh brings up a good point: Rockland’s transit options are terrible (although he didn’t mention buses). Out of curiosity, what is the county’s stance on putting rail on the Tappan Zee replacement? That may be the biggest opportunity for transit improvement, but since the bridge is not an MTA property, not a penny of these new taxes/fares/etc. will go towards that project.