The tolling trolling begins

Feb 26, 2025

Governor Kathy Hochul delivers remarks at MTA Board Meeting.

Gov. Kathy Hochul flipped through a presentation on congestion pricing her staff made for former President Donald Trump at an MTA board meeting today. | Susan Watts/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul

STORYTIME FOR DONALD: Call it congestion trolling.

Gov. Kathy Hochul flew down from Albany on Wednesday for an MTA board meeting to continue her attack on President Donald Trump’s move to kill the Manhattan toll program.

During her noon appearance in Midtown, the governor held up and flipped through a presentation her staff made for Trump as if she were at the head of an elementary school classroom instead of the MTA board table.

“Real simple terms, real nice pictures,” she said of the booklet titled “New York: Fast, Strong, Beautiful.”

It was the latest sign that the fight with Trump has breathed new life into Hochul’s administration.

Supporters also believe the controversial program is starting to sell itself. Bus riders and car drivers are routinely experiencing 10- to 30-minute reductions to their commutes, MTA CEO Janno Lieber said.

“I don’t think she was taunting anyone,” he said of Hochul during a post-meeting press conference. “I think she’s speaking forcefully for New Yorkers who are telling us in polls and in anecdotes and just based on the data that congestion pricing is a success.”

Lieber argues congestion pricing meets the Trump administration’s own goals for transportation by cutting commute times while providing mass transit funding through user fees, rather than broad-based taxes.

Hochul, back from her White House meeting with Trump on Friday, said American public transit systems, including the MTA, are facing an existential threat from Washington. She also said Republicans in the New York congressional delegation got “steamrolled” into voting for a budget that is poised to force major cuts to Medicaid and other programs.

Citing a letter New York officials received calling for an “orderly cessation” of the tolls by March 21, Hochul said she had other plans: “orderly resistance.”

“I know there's a lot of power in that Oval Office,” she said. “But I'll put that power up against the power of six million pissed off commuters in New York City.”

New York is also backing up the governor’s rhetoric with litigation.

A lawsuit the state filed to block Trump’s move was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Liman who has so far swatted down other challenges to the tolling program.

Congestion pricing is a decades-in-the-making toll that took effect in early January. The $9 tolls are meant to discourage traffic from entering Central Manhattan and help fund billions of dollars in upgrades to the MTA’s aging bus and subway system. — Ry Rivard

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From the Capitol

Carl Heastie speaks with reporters.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie spoke with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo about his likely run for mayor. | Hans Pennink/AP

TALKING WITH CUOMO: Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie spoke recently with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo ahead of his imminent mayoral campaign.

Speaking at the Capitol this morning, the Bronx Democrat would not divulge the specifics of the conversation.

“He reached out to me, he’s running — well, he may be running to be mayor of the city of New York. I’m not trying to make any announcement for anybody,” Heastie told reporters. “And the conversation was really around that.”

Heastie would have presided over an impeachment of Cuomo, but pulled the plug on the proceeding after his resignation in 2021 following sexual harassment allegations, which he’s strenuously denied.

Asked if he’s concerned about working with Cuomo again, Heastie noted the New York City mayor is structurally less powerful than the governor of New York.

“The powers of a governor are wholly different than the powers of a mayor,” Heastie said.

It’s generally true: Past mayors’ agendas have been stymied by Albany leaders. Michael Bloomberg was thwarted in his effort to get a West Side stadium. Bill de Blasio never got his a tax increase to pay for universal pre-Kindergarten. The late Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver essentially killed Bloomberg’s congestion pricing more than 15 years ago.

But Cuomo, a press savvy politician, would almost certainly be able to leverage the media bullhorn any mayor has at their disposal. — Nick Reisman

JOSH RILEY VS. THE LEGISLATURE: Freshman Democratic Rep. Josh Riley is blaming the state’s massive corrections officers strike on prison reforms passed by his fellow Democrats in Albany.

And the congressman’s harsh words for his fellow Dems is brewing a new rivalry between him and another millennial Democrat hailing from an upstate swing district.

“Corrections officers have a tough job in harsh conditions with minimal resources,” Riley, a Hudson Valley congressmember, wrote in a social media post Tuesday. “Instead of helping, Albany politicians are making things even worse with half-baked policies and mandates. Law enforcement, including COs, shouldn’t be collateral damage in Albany’s latest dysfunction. Let’s get these folks what they need so they can get back to work.”

As of Tuesday, about 9 in 10 corrections officers were involved in a wildcat strike around the state, affecting more than two dozen prisons. In the meantime, 6,500 National Guard troops have been deployed to fill in for the striking corrections officers.

The statement from Riley — who flipped his district blue in a November rematch with former Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro — earned the ire of Orange County Democratic state Sen. James Skoufis and other lawmakers who passed the HALT Act in 2022. The measure limits the use of solitary confinement in state prisons.

The prison guards say the law has made their work more dangerous and want it repealed. Lawmakers who passed it call solitary confinement a of form of torture, citing the United Nations.

“Congressman, are you asking us to reinstate torture in NYS prisons?” responded Democratic state Sen. Andrew Gounardes.

“All due respect, you haven’t tweeted about Trump since July 2024. I’m in a Trump +12 district and do so regularly,” said Skoufis, one month off of his quixotic bid for DNC chair. “Yet, you have no problem lobbing a cheap shot at HV Democrats like Sens Hinchey, Harckham, and me who are fighting to make our prisons safer. Do better.”

Other state lawmakers — including state Sens. Michelle Hinchey, Lea Webb, Pat Fahy and many assemblymembers — were appalled with Riley’s statement, Skoufis said.

“I don’t take talking points from DNC-wannabees, and I sure as hell don’t work for downstate politicians,” Riley said in a statement to Playbook. “I work for Upstate New Yorkers. I’m hearing from COs who are being forced to pull 16+ hour shifts in dangerous conditions, who haven’t been home to see their families in days, and their spouses who are worried about losing the health insurance they need – you’re damn right I’m going to stand with them."

While the strikes are ongoing, Hochul is responding by playing hardball: she’s issuing legal summons for striking workers and threatening to take away their health care. — Jason Beeferman

From City Hall

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch at a lectern.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch spoke at an Association for a Better New York breakfast this morning. | Matt Capowski/ABNY

TISCH SAYS NO TO TRUMP: New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch assured New York’s permanent government today she would refuse to cooperate with any Trump administration efforts to deport immigrants who aren’t accused of crimes.

“NYPD will continue to target criminals regardless of their immigration status, including with our local, state and federal task force partners as we always had,” Tisch said at a breakfast hosted by the Association for a Better New York. “The NYPD will not participate in civil immigration endorsement — period.”

Her remarks drew hearty applause from the audience — another sign the political and governmental classes believe Mayor Eric Adams to be compromised on the issue.

The Trump administration has been dangling over Adams’ head the prospect of dismissing the mayor’s federal bribery case, in part because they want Adams to help carry out its deportation agenda. And a "Fox & Friends," interview featuring threats from border czar Tom Homan to a muted Adams proved particularly alarming to observers.

Tisch also took aim at city lawmakers, for proposing to nix an NYPD gang database and state officials for enacting criminal justice reforms that she argued have promoted recidivism.

“Two weeks ago, I met legislators and our state Capitol to send them a direct message: We must do better,” Tisch said. “It was a productive trip, and it appears the message has finally made its way up the New York State Thruway and into the halls of state government.” — Joe Anuta

ADAMS’ NEW DISMISSAL MOTION: Adams asked a federal judge today to dismiss the criminal case against him in a way that wouldn’t allow federal prosecutors to reindict him at a later date, POLITICO reports.

The request puts Adams at odds with the Justice Department’s effort to abandon the case now while still reserving the option to revive the charges in the future.

In a 20–page filing, Adams’ lawyers argued that the five-count corruption case should be dropped without the possibility of being resurrected due to what they described as the improper disclosure of Justice Department correspondence, most notably a letter from then-interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

In Sassoon’s letter, she disclosed that her office was “prepared” to seek additional charges against Adams based on evidence showing he destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI. The letter accused Adams and his lawyers of offering a quid pro quo to the Justice Department. In their filing, Adams’ lawyers also derided the publication of other internal correspondence, particularly an “unhinged” resignation letter from one of the prosecutors on the case, Hagan Scotten.

“In addition to violating Mayor Adams’s fundamental constitutional rights and ability to receive a fair trial, the government’s leaks violated numerous statutory and court rules, including the Justice Department’s own longstanding policies aimed at curbing prosecutorial misconduct,” Adams lawyers Alex Spiro and William Burck wrote to U.S. District Judge Dale Ho. Due to the “extreme prejudice” caused by the disclosure of the letters, they wrote, Ho should dismiss the case “with prejudice,” a legal term meaning prosecutors couldn’t seek to reinstate the charges at a later date.

That’s an important distinction from the Justice Department’s effort to drop the case. Earlier this month, Emil Bove, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, ordered Manhattan prosecutors to seek to dismiss the case “without prejudice,” a step to which Adams agreed.

That — along with Bove’s argument that the charges should be dropped in part to allow Adams to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration policies — drew accusations from legal experts and Adams’ fellow Democrats that the Trump administration would use the threat of future charges to keep Adams in line. — Erica Orden

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

New York City Mayor Eric Adams delivers remarks at DC37 80th anniversary gala in Manhattan on Saturday, October 26, 2024.

Mayor Eric Adams delivers at a DC37 event last year. He will be skipping the union's mayoral forum tonight. | Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

WHERE’S ERIC?: Adams will be skipping District Council 37’s candidate forum tonight, POLITICO’s Sally Goldenberg first reported.

That’s the latest sign that the mayor’s reelection campaign hasn’t gotten off the ground yet, since he’d previously committed to making his campaign trail debut with the public sector workers union that helped catapult him into office four years ago.

The mayor’s lawyers suggested he avoid political forums until his case is settled, “out of an abundance of caution,” an Adams aide said — advice that appears at odds with the mayor voluntarily speaking about his case in frequent televised interviews and press conferences and engaging in other political activity, like petitioning to get on the ballot.

Adams also wanted to avoid the forum if former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams won’t be there. Cuomo, who’s led every poll, is expected to launch his campaign in the coming days while Speaker Adams is reportedly mulling a bid.

“Everyone that’s running should be in the room,” he told reporters Wednesday. “No candidate should be able to stay on the sideline and just send out innuendos. If you’re running, do what we’re doing, being out here answering questions.”

In an earlier interview on “The Reset Talk Show,” Adams attacked those who’ve called on him to step down, saying they are “attempting to usurp the powers of the voters.”

“You got people who are saying 'the president used the word "king," and who does he think he is?’” Adams said. “Well, hey, you've got people acting like kings in the city that say they're going to take away the power of the New York voting population."

Hochul declined to remove Adams following discussions with power players, and has focused on Trump calling himself a king. City Hall wouldn’t say who Adams was referring to, but Hochul spokesperson Avi Small believed he was talking about other “haters.”

“Given the governor’s consistent support for New York City, not to mention the fact that she hasn’t called for resignation or removal, at this time, I’ve got to assume he’s referring to someone else,” he said. — Jeff Coltin

HAKEEM’S EARLY GIFT TO CUOMO: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is already saying nice things about former Gov. and likely mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo.

"I think he'd be a candidate that a lot of people, as I've heard from the district that I represent, would be very interested in checking out," Jeffries told Spectrum News today on the Hill.

The tacitly friendly remark from the most powerful House Democrat comes as Cuomo prepares to enter the mayor’s race as soon as this weekend.

Jeffries, who doesn’t historically have a great relationship with Adams, backed Maya Wiley in 2021 and shares a base with state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who is running for mayor. Jeffries endorsed Myrie in 2018.

Jeffries also said he looks forward to speaking with Cuomo “sooner rather than later.” — Jason Beeferman

IN OTHER NEWS

— CUOMO-ALIGNED MAYORAL SUPER-PAC: A super PAC formed by Cuomo allies and named “Fix the City” was filed today. (The New York Times)

— ADAMS ON DEFENSE: The mayor is facing backlash after invoking a comparison to Jesus and calling Black leaders who have urged him to resign “negroes” who need forgiveness from God. (Daily News)

— LEGISLATURE SHRUGS AT HOCHUL’S GUARDRAILS: State lawmakers are unenthusiastic about Hochul’s proposed measures to curtail Adams’ power. (New York Post)

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