New York House Republicans plan to attack congestion pricing from “every avenue,” with the aim to kill the contentious toll program that president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to “TERMINATE” from the White House.
“We’re looking at every avenue from the executive, to the legislative, to the judiciary, to kill this because it’s bulls–t,” Hudson Valley Rep. Mike Lawler told The Post Friday. “It’s a scam.”
The promised full court press in Congress, the courts and federal bureaucracy against congestion pricing follows Gov. Kathy Hochul’s announcement Thursday that she’d revive the program charging cars to enter Manhattan below 60th Street a $9 toll starting in the New Year.
The toll will be increased to $12 by 2028, and spike to the originally-planned $15 after 2031, according to the governor’s office.
Lawler’s all-out effort against the tolls has also extended to the internet: the potential 2026 gubernatorial candidate launched the website “congestionpricingsucks.com” Friday that argued Hochul is asking motorists to “bail out the MTA for their crappy budgeting.”
“This congestion pricing scheme is nothing more than a massive new tax on working families, daily commuters, college students, and local residents who just want to travel within the city they call home,” the site states.
A senior GOP aide said if Hochul’s plan forges ahead before the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2025, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are prepared to immediately introduce and pass legislative fixes to withhold federal funds to New York.
“I would expect it to happen in the first six months of the year,” the aide said, pointing out it “could be sooner” but that would depend on whether Trump takes any executive action.
The governor’s announcement was met by praise from congestion pricing supporters unhappy with her last-minute decision in the summer to put the plan on “pause,” as well as a thunderous renewed outcry from opponents, including Trump.
He lambasted Hochul for resurrecting the “most regressive tax known to womankind (man!)” — but notably didn’t say whether he’d follow through on his past promise to “TERMINATE” the program during his first week in the White House. His team simply supplied his Thursday statement in response to The Post’s request for comment Friday.
But politicians and other operatives The Post spoke to said the courts may well be the best route for opponents to kill congestion pricing — before Trump even takes office Jan. 20.
A judge could delay the tolls’ anticipated Jan. 5 start by granting an injunction in the high-profile anti-congestion pricing lawsuit from Staten Island lawmakers and the United Federation of Teachers.
Failing that, both Lawler and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island) told The Post they believe a Trump Department of Transportation would be able to undo the Biden administration’s sign-off on the tolling program unilaterally.
Such a step would require Hochul and proponents to mount a court challenge to keep the sign-off in place.
“I do believe there’s plenty of grounds for the Trump administration to revoke it,” Lawler said. “And let Governor Hochul take it to court. If she believes so strongly in this brilliant strategy and policy then fine, take it to court and own it.”
“I think a lawsuit is probably most effective because they violated federal law by not requiring a full and thorough environmental impact statement as required under [The National Environmental Policy Act],” Malliotakis said. “The Biden Administration just rubber stamped this without requiring them to comply with NEPA.”
The Biden administration in 2021 gave New York City and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority the go-ahead to conduct an environmental assessment of congestion pricing’s impacts in a less stringent review than what critics wanted.
The Trump administration could try to claim the full environmental impact statement was warranted as a way to ignite another court fight to derail the toll after he takes office.
Hochul and MTA officials, however, are keenly aware that the plan would be subject to fierce challenges from the administration and other opponents.
The governor’s revamped plan to impose a $9 toll instead of a $15 one isn’t a wholesale change, and the MTA board’s upcoming Nov. 18 vote likely will adopt an “update” to congestion pricing rather than an entirely reworked proposal itself.
Toll proponents view this as a strategy to make the first-in-the-nation toll program more resilient to legal and administrative challenges.
“The reactivation of congestion pricing is being done in a way to make it as tight and sensible as possible from legal challenge and that includes things like making it a phase-in where we do get to the $15 rate that was signed off on by the feds in June,” Rachael Fauss, senior policy advisor at the pro-congestion group Reinvent Albany told The Post.
“It was structured that way to make it as tight as possible against a legal challenge,” Fauss said.
The swirl of ambiguity prompted New York House Republicans — who’d already sent the president-elect a letter this week urging him to scuttle what they called the “latest in a long string of tyrannical taxes” — and other opponents to eye legislation to kill the plan, as first reported by Gothamist.
A House GOP aide familiar with the matter told The Post Friday that it’s “safe to say there have been a bunch of conversations” about killing congestion pricing.
“Our letter to the president-elect plus Hochul rushing immediately after the letter to implement it has shown that this was always about politics on her end,” the aide added.
New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who called Hochul’s revival “insane,” has said he would work with anyone in the GOP to end the fees that he argued will saddle Garden State motorist commuters with another $2,500 a year in tolls.
But Congress could end up being a dead end in the fight to nix congestion pricing.
“I don’t see [House Speaker Mike] Johnson wasting floor time on a New York City congestion bill in Trump’s first year,” another congressional aide said, noting this was likely a decision for the incoming transportation secretary, who hasn’t yet been named publicly.
— Additional reporting by Carl Campanile