Bloomberg Waits for Assembly Majority on Commuter Tax

After Sheldon Silver dropped the news that he's open to reinstituting the commuter tax, Michael Bloomberg told reporters in City Hall that he himself is also in favor of bringing it back. Bloomberg stopped short of demanding Republican state lawmakers take action.

“I’ve always thought it was a very bad mistake to give up the commuter tax back when it was done,” the mayor said. “I’ve been screaming about the commuter tax for all the time I’ve been here.”

New York City's commuter tax was lifted in 1999.

Bloomberg added, “The fact that the speaker is in favor of it is encouraging, but there’s 145-odd members in the Assembly, and we’re going to need a majority of them, as well, if we are to reinstitute it.”

That, essentially, was the lesson of the failure of congestion pricing.