Disarray Hits After Defeat Of Auto Tax

Seeing that I don’t live in that end of the state it’s hard for me to argue the point of this TAX either way. All I know is to me it is ridiculous, so this defeat appears to be a huge victory for the people. I can’t think of much I like about Bloomberg either.

Congestion Pricing Wreckage Scattered in Albany

Disarray Hits After Defeat Of Auto Tax
ALBANY — The wreckage of Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan is raining debris across the statehouse, leaving the relationship between the city’s leader and state lawmakers in tatters and threatening to throw budget talks into further disarray.

Barely concealing their joy at having defied the will of a mayor who used his fortune and influence to try to build support for the overriding priority of his second term, Assembly Democrats stomped on the ashes of the plan, which they buried without even a public vote on the chamber floor. Mr. Bloomberg, who promoted his plan for charging workday motorists $8 to drive into much of Manhattan as both a solution to the city’s traffic woes and a steady revenue stream to advance mass transit projects, responded to the defeat with fury, painting Democrats and their leader, Speaker Sheldon Silver, as small-minded cowards.

“It takes true leadership and courage to embrace new concepts and ideas and to be willing to try something. Unfortunately, both are lacking in the Assembly today,” he said in a statement. “If that wasn’t shameful enough, it takes a special type of cowardice for elected officials to refuse to stand up and vote their conscience — on an issue that has been debated, and amended significantly to resolve many outstanding issues, for more than a year.”

Seemingly lost in the drama was the state of this year’s fiscal budget, which lawmakers have battled over in secret meetings that have yielded little resolution. As of last night, they hadn’t agreed to major components of this year’s spending plan, including revenue and education bills.

Lawmakers have pointed to several sticking points — among them are Senate Republican demands for sunset measures on new targeted business taxes; a dispute over a proposal that would prohibit the city Department of Education from using student test score data as a factor for determining teacher tenure decisions, and a tussle over the distribution of capital funds — and each house has blamed the other for holding up talks.

Governor Paterson, a former lieutenant governor who took office less than a month ago, has limited himself to brief public appearances in the last week and has refused to discuss specifics of the negotiations.