(Originally published in WND.)
New York City is becoming as bad as California, and that’s saying something.
The city just voted to kill many of the small businesses in the city and have large businesses move out of the city. It’s the latest move to show that Mayor Eric Adams and the city council have no ability to manage a city.
Just like California’s wealth tax sent the state’s highest earners looking for a new place to live, so NYC’s new commuter toll will send businesses and workers away from a city that is already suffering economic problems.
New York is now the first U.S. city to adopt a commuter toll. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has authorized a plan to charge drivers $15 a day to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. The toll is expected to start in June after plate-reading cameras are installed in the area.
The reason for this toll sounds good … on the surface. They want to reduce congestion and pollution in the city. Who wouldn’t? Doing so will improve the quality of life.
The problem is the city is facing a multitude of problems that rank a lot higher in improving the quality of life in the city, such as reducing crime, dealing with the flood of illegal immigrants and the high cost of housing. Fix any one of those problem, and the city will improve the quality of life for its residents more than the commuter toll ever will.
In fact, the toll will cause more harm than good.
When you make it more costly to do business in certain areas of the city, fewer businesses will do business there. Didn’t the mayor and council members learn anything from watching businesses leave and close because rampant shoplifting made the cost of doing business too expensive? This will do the same thing, except it’s the government acting as the shoplifter.
Even the businesses who want to stay will face problems. They will have to pay higher wages to offset the commuter toll. That is, if they can even find someone willing to work.
Supporters of the toll say it will generate billions of dollars that will be used to improve the city’s mass transit system.
That won’t happen.
First, when it comes to financial revenue estimates, government agencies are notorious for not truly accounting for the reductions tax increases cause to whatever it is the tax is applied to. In this case, the toll makes commuting more expensive, so that number of commuters drop, generating less-than-projected revenues.
Second, if there is a pot of money sitting in the budget, officials will find a way to spend it on projects other than what it is marked for. Then, they will argue that the toll needs to be increased because there’s not enough money in the pot.
Third, they expect to pay for the mass transit improvements with this toll. So, to make the improvements happen, they need commuters, who will be avoiding Manhattan at all costs and the $300 additional monthly expense this toll will cause. Hence, the improvements won’t be funded or at least won’t be funded in a timely manner.
In other words, the city will waste any revenues generated as it watches more businesses discover that there are better places to do businesses in the digital age than poorly run cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
