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Silver on Congestion Pricing: It Was a Class Thing

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By Tom Acitelli

June 6, 2008 | 1:50 p.m

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From Geoffrey Gray's New York magazine profile of State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver:

He recalls a conversation he had with Robert Rubin—the former Treasury secretary, current Citigroup director, and friend of the billionaire mayor’s. Rubin, like us, was also stuck in traffic and decided to give Silver a call to talk up the proposal. Silver says, “Let me ask you something, Bob. Are you in one of those limo-type cars?” He was. “You know under the mayor’s plan your car doesn’t pay to be congesting, it’s only the little guy. He exempted the cabs, he’s exempted the limos. I mean, I look at it sometimes and I say, Yeah, he doesn’t care about paying $8. What does it mean to him? Just get the riffraff off the streets, you know, just get the poor people off the streets so they can’t use them … ”