Katz Versus Yassky on Congestion Pricing Unknowns

Last night two city comptroller candidates -- Melinda Katz and David Weprin -- voted against congestion pricing, while three of their likely opponents in the race -- David Yassky, Simcha Felder and John Liu -- voted for it.

-Yassky, who recently padded his credentials as an urban environmentalist, said of his vote, “Can you prove this is going to work? No, I can’t prove it. We live in a world of uncertainty. But it was a great New Yorker, Franklin Roosevelt, who said, ‘Try something. If it doesn’t work, try something else. But above all, you try something. ‘ When you have a problem of this magnitude, you have to try something.”

In the clip above, Katz takes the opposing side.

“For those folks talking about the environmental issues and the impact this is going to have on the environment: How do we know?" she asked. "For every land-use decision on rezoning there is at least an environmental impact study,” she added, noting that there has been no such study for congestion pricing. “To not know what to do but to say--‘we need to try it, we need to do it,'--is just, to me, not responsible.”