Gov. Kathy Hochul said she has no plans on complying with a federal deadline to end New York City’s deeply unpopular congestion pricing scheme on Sunday — with a spokesman defiantly telling The Post that “the cameras are staying on.”
The White House in February threatened to block the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from collecting the $9 toll, which went into effect Jan. 5 for vehicles entering parts of Manhattan below 60th Street.
The MTA filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration that month, with the city and state’s transportation later piling on and joining the legal action against the feds.
“Despite the Administration’s ‘royal’ decree, its effort to summarily and unilaterally overturn the solution to the City’s congestion enacted by New Yorkers’ elected representatives is unlawful and invalid,” the amended complaint states.
City Mayor Eric Adams voiced his support of the lawsuit as New York barreled toward the April 20 deadline last week.
The White House has declined to specify what, if anything, will happen if New York ignored the deadline set by the US Department of Transportation.
The agency earlier this month posted on X it would “not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal” to shut the tolls down if the state didn’t comply, but refused to provide specifics.
The White House previously demanded the MTA stop collecting tolls March 21, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced before the deadline that the US DOT granted a 30-day extension through Sunday as negotiations continued.
In a statement to The Post Sunday, MTA Chief, Policy and External Relations John J. McCarthy reaffirmed the agency’s decision to sue the DOT, and hit out against Duffy for throwing his weight around.
“In case there were any doubts, MTA, State and City reaffirmed in a court filing that congestion pricing is here to stay and that the arguments Secretary Duffy made trying to stop it have zero merit,” the spokesman said.
The US DOT did not respond to a request for comment by The Post on Sunday in response to the defiant response from Hochul’s office as the deadline lapsed.
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