Mayor de Blasio was doing well. He was sticking up for New Yorkers against an absurd proposal made by Gov. Cuomo to bail out the MTA to the tune of more than $400 million. The governor wants the city to save the MTA from the governor’s own disastrous management.
“For nearly a month, Cuomo has been deflecting attention from his own failures.”
But then the mayor figured something out: He could use the governor’s failure to squeeze Gotham’s rich. And the mayor loves to squeeze the rich — even if it means losing a battle against the governor that he — and New York City — should have won.
For nearly a month, Cuomo has been deflecting attention from his own failures. Only 61.7 percent of subway trains run on time, sure — nearly a one-third drop since he took office.
But it can’t be the fault of the governor, or the MTA board that he’s appointed.
Instead, it must be de Blasio’s fault. No matter that the mayor recommends only a minority of the board members to the MTA and has no day-to-day responsibility.
The MTA’s problem must be a lack of money, in the governor’s recent thinking — and who has a lot of extra money lying around? The city of New York, with its $4.2 billion surplus.
Read the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post