It’s now or never on expanding taxi service to the outer boroughs, Mayor Bloomberg warned today as a deadline loomed for Gov. Cuomo to sign or veto the proposal.
“If you don’t pass it now, then it starts falling apart,” the mayor said on WOR radio.
“The history of legislation — you’ve got to do it or not do it. But you don’t have another chance at it. This is something people have been working on for four or five decades. All of a sudden the stars are aligned. If you don’t do it now, the stars won’t be aligned. I’m optimistic.”
The city’s plan to create a new fleet of 17,000 taxis that would be allowed to pick up street hails in the boroughs outside Manhattan and north of 96th Street appears to be on life support after winning approval by the Legislature.
Cuomo aides have said he won’t sign the bill it passed allowing the street hails, which includes a provision authorizing the city to sell 2,000 additional yellow taxi medallions to bring in a desperately-needed $1 billion.
He has 10 business days to act once the bill reaches his desk today.
Mayoral aides who thought they had a locked-in deal yesterday expressed astonishment at the last-minute snag, which they say came out of the blue after months of negotiations with the governor’s office, the legislature and the fractured industry.
Bloomberg wouldn’t predict what the governor might do, even after speaking to him late yesterday.
The mayor insisted the city had worked “as far as I can tell to accommodate every single objection — or suggestion — that he has made…So I think it’s what he really needs. So I hope he signs it.”
The state has power over just about anything the city wants to do to raise new revenue, clearly an irritating fact of life for the mayor.
“These are the sort of things that really should be left up to the city,” he concluded.