Action Alert: Stop Governor Cuomo’s Congestion Pricing Wall

**Sign the petition below and afterwords click the “Email official” button and tell Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to repeal congestion pricing now.**

The Governor’s congestion pricing plan will disproportionately affect low-income commuters, many of whom already carpool to save on costs.

Petition Statement

We, the undersigned taxpayers, demand that Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and the State Senate Majority repeal congestion pricing. Governor Cuomo’s congestion pricing scheme is just another way for lawmakers to tax New Yorkers. Instead of addressing years of government waste and abuse at the MTA, the Governor’s plan shifts the financial burden to suburban and outer-borough commuters, with a disparate impact on low-income drivers and those of us in a transit desert, as well as Manhattan’s small businesses and consumers through skyrocketing delivery costs.

The Governor is trying to pass off congestion pricing as a solution to the City’s traffic nightmare and his failed leadership of a crumbling transit system. But it’s just one more way New York prices its people out of state. We are already struggling as it is, and we can’t afford yet another tax.

Petition Background

The crisis of the MTA requires Accountability and Transparency, while ensuring Affordability for all New Yorkers. By disregarding these requirements like Albany did when enacting the MTA Payroll Tax ten years ago, the Congestion Pricing plan is throwing our money down a black hole.

Ten years ago, Albany addressed the MTA’s financial crisis with a new dedicated funding stream in the form of the MTA Payroll Tax, which currently provides almost $2 billion in revenue each year. However, Albany did not fix the MTA’s deeper problems, hoping that additional money would mask the authority’s rampant waste, fraud and abuse. Albany even abdicated its self-imposed requirement to conduct an independent audit.

The transit system’s infrastructure is failing because the city and state have chronically underfunded capital improvements while micromanaging prestige projects. They must invest their own money into the MTA: It’s time for the city and state to immediately and unconditionally fund their $10 billion Capital commitment, as promised in 2016, and substantially increase its annual subsidy through existing revenues.