MTA defies feds' fourth deadline to kill congestion pricing, calls Duffy threats a ‘sham'
Fourth time's a 'sham.'
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority defied the feds' fourth deadline to kill congestion pricing — while ripping Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's repeated threats as a 'sham.'
In a pair of letters sent to Duffy on Wednesday, the MTA and the state Department of Transportation said that his deadlines and letters threatening to yank federal funding were irrelevant — since the battle over the tolling program is playing out in court.
The May 21 time limit for the MTA to stop collecting the $9 tolls on drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street was ordered in a letter Duffy sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul last month — when his third deadline came and went.
The April 21 letter gave Hochul another 30 days to prove to him why the US Department of Transportation shouldn't 'remedy New York's non-compliance' by yanking untold amounts of federal transit funding.
But state agencies argued in the recent filings that the whiplash back-and-forth was 'procedurally improper.'
The MTA attorneys argued there wasn't even a point in responding to Duffy's threat, since according to the transportation secretary's original Feb. 19 letter announcing he was pulling federal approval for the first-in-the-nation program, he has already made up his mind.
That letter 'already purported to 'terminate'' congestion pricing, wrote attorney Roberta Kaplan, 'without any prior notice or opportunity to be heard as required by the relevant regulations.'
'It is thus obvious that USDOT's decision has already been made, and that this is an 'opportunity to be heard' in name only,' Kaplan argued.
'Secretary Duffy did not afford the Project Sponsors any notice or due process before that alleged termination, and he cannot cure that failure now through a sham exchange of letters,' Kaplan wrote.
The state DOT letter goes further, and hints that Duffy's lawyers may be trying to form a new legal argument to kill the toll — citing Duffy's ask last month that Hochul address 'policy concerns' mentioned in his Feb. 19 missive.
'The Secretary's February 19 letter did not state that those policy concerns were an independent basis for his decision,' state Assistant Attorney General Andrew Frank wrote, 'and as a legal matter they cannot be a basis for termination.'
Kaplan added that 'those supposed policy concerns' were mere 'after-the-fact rationalizations to justify the Secretary's illegal attempt to end the Program.'
Both comments hint at the concerns expressed in an internal Department of Justice memo erroneously filed to the public docket on behalf of the US DOT by since-removed federal attorneys.
The memo expressed doubts over Duffy's legal reasoning behind his original letter, casting his strategy as 'very unlikely' to succeed, and encouraged a move towards one focused on shifting priorities and policies.
The latest filing by the feds in the case is a memo opposing the MTA's request for a preliminary injunction asking the judge to bar Duffy from making good on his threat to pull funding in retaliation for the agency not stopping the tolls.
The memo notes that the US DOT's 'decision making process is still unfolding.'
A federal DOT spokesperson told The Post that 'we will be reviewing New York's response to determine if they remain in compliance.'
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