TRUMP AND THE ‘TERRIBLE TAX’: President Donald Trump called the congestion pricing toll program a “terrible tax on the working class” during his White House meeting with Hochul, she said in a TV interview this morning. The governor told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” she plans to keep pressing to keep the program — which charges drivers $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street — and won’t turn off the cameras next month as the U.S. Department of Transportation requested. “We have to fight to keep it going,” Hochul said, adding she plans to mount “an orderly resistance” to Trump’s anti-congestion pricing posture. The controversial program has been in place since Jan. 5 and is meant to generate revenue that will be used to leverage $15 billion bonds to bolster the region’s troubled mass transit infrastructure. Opponents contend the tolls hurt commuters and divert more money to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But Hochul — who initially delayed congestion pricing in June over political concerns, only to move forward with the program after Election Day — has embraced the viewpoint of supporters: The tolls have reduced traffic in the congested city. “This city is at a different place than before congestion pricing,” she said. And the governor compared the fight with Trump over the tolls to the national abortion debate following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, framing both as a states’ rights issue. “The Trump administration has said it should be up to the states to decide whether women can control their own bodies, right?” she said. “But they’re telling me as a state that I can’t control my own traffic.” — Nick Reisman CAUTION AT CUNY: An event at the City College of New York featuring Hochul, Rep. Adriano Espaillat and union and CUNY leaders was abruptly canceled this afternoon as a small group of pro-Palestinian protests gathered and chanted outside of the venue. The incident came on the heels of a protest Wednesday at Barnard College, where protesters entered the hall housing the dean’s offices and assaulted an employee, according to the school. “Due to safety concerns, we made the decision to postpone today’s event at Shepherd Hall,” City College spokesperson Dee Dee Mozeleski said in a statement. “We are very proud of the partnership between the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York and City College’s Rangel infrastructure Workforce Initiative, and we look forward to rescheduling this event soon.” The small crowd at City College, some masked and wearing keffiyeh scarves, chanted anti-Hochul slogans and called for divestment. Hochul went on to her next event in the Bronx as scheduled. — Emily Ngo THE $1 BILLION COLLECTING DUST: A slate of assemblymembers are calling on the governor to reform the state’s Raise the Age program after a POLITICO report found that nearly $1 billion allocated for the youth justice program has remained unspent while counties experience a severe shortage of beds for juvenile offenders. The Raise the Age program, which ended the practice of charging 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for certain crimes in New York, came into full effect in 2019. The law included hundreds of millions of dollars in annual appropriations meant to support counties as they experienced an influx of teens into the youth criminal justice system. The money was also meant to fund alternatives to incarceration, like after school tutoring, counseling and treatment for substance abuse. But since 2018, just $569 million of $1.55 billion allocated for the program has been spent. Now Assemblymembers Andrew Hevesi, chair of the Committee on Children and Families and Michaelle Solages, who leads the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus, are sending a letter to Hochul demanding she provide “urgent assistance” to ensure the “full and effective disbursement of the nearly $1 billion in unspent funds.” “While it is our understanding the law may not have included provisions for continued compliance after the initial rollout, it is incumbent upon our state leaders to ensure that programs we enact reach full effectiveness and fund utilization,” the letter reads. The call on Hochul, which also thanked the governor for her work to support families in the state, was signed by 12 additional lawmakers and arrived on Hochul’s desk on Friday. The letter asks Hochul to perform two audits of the Raise the Age program and roll out a timeline and plan that ensures the funds are fully disbursed. “Raise the Age is sound public policy that has unnecessarily become a black eye for Democrats in New York State,” Hevesi said in a statement. “It is yet another broken promise from former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who announced it with great fanfare and never funded it. We will fix this unnecessary mess to ensure that these kids receive the services that are required in the enabling statute.” Cuomo’s spokesperson, Rich Azzopardi, responded to Hevesi’s comment: “The funding for Raise the Age — which remember was passed by Democrats and Republicans in the State legislature — is a reimbursement program that requires the counties to apply for it, but Hevesi is no letter writing bystander. Last I checked he was an assemblymember and if changes needed to be made, he had years to make them.” — Jason Beeferman | 
