Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has been criticized by both sides of the aisle for her waffling on a congestion pricing plan, but she has said the attacks are unwarranted.
Instead, the blame should be laid at the feet of her predecessor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Hochul told a crowd at a Manhattan event that she inherited the congestion pricing problem from Cuomo and had to “clean up the mess.”
Cuomo signed the bill that would start the path to implementing congestion pricing in 2019 but never put the toll into place during his tenure as governor. His term ended after a sexual misconduct scandal forced him out of office in 2021.
Cuomo shot back at Hochul’s attempts to pin the blame on him.
“It was under Kathy Hochul’s watch that her MTA adopted the $15 congestion charge and was its main champion,” Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi told the Washington Examiner. “The only mess created here was her sloppy fits, starts, reversals, and re-reversals that all seemed to coincide with the political calendar. New Yorkers aren’t stupid, she’s been governor for more than three years, and constantly blaming the last guy for your own shortcomings isn’t leadership — but it does explain her poll numbers and the increasing number of Democrats openly fretting about 2026.”
Hochul has frequently criticized the former governor. Before he resigned in 2021, she called his misconduct “repulsive and unlawful ” and took a shot at him this year after a former aide was charged with working as an undisclosed foreign agent for China.
“She primarily worked for Andrew Cuomo for many more years,” Hochul noted then. “She was with me just a short time, about 15 months.”
Her criticism of Cuomo likely comes with little consequence. The Democratic Party distanced itself from Cuomo after his sexual misconduct scandal forced him out of politics.
Hochul explained that she was willing to take on the congestion pricing problem that Cuomo left her anyway.
“I never gravitate toward the easy,” she said. “I gravitate toward the hard.”
The New York governor recently announced that congestion pricing would go forward but with a $9 price tag for commuters instead of $15. The plan is scheduled to go into effect in January.
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“This is not turn it on and say goodbye,” Hochul said. “We will continue looking at this.”
As for Cuomo, he remains in the background of New York politics, often rumored to be a candidate to be New York City’s next mayor.
