NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: Gov. Hochul Decides Against Removing Mayor Adams, Long Island’s Water at Risk, Yankees Extend Boone’s Contract, and the Future of Congestion Pricing

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Governor Kathy Hochul has decided not to remove Mayor Eric Adams from office after weighing the possibility for much of the week. Meanwhile, Long Island’s water supply is under threat due to aging septic tanks and cesspools, including an illegal one found at a Nassau County funeral home. Also, Yankees manager Aaron Boone is sticking around, the team extended his contract for two more years through at least 2027. Plus, in this week’s transit segment, a look at what’s next for congestion pricing after President Trump moved to cancel it.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, February 21st. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. Governor Kathy Hokel spent much of this week considering whether to remove Mayor Adams from office. WNYC's John Campbell explains why she's decided against it. It's morning edition on... Hokel says she won't invoke her legal authority to oust Adams.

That's despite her concerns about the Trump administration's push to dismiss the mayor's pending criminal charges. Hockel says it's up to the voters to decide the mayor's fate. Do those who conclude that decision is due to pressure many groups or individuals, I say this, you do not know me. Instead of removing Adams, the governor wants the state to have more oversight over the mayor's office for the rest of the year. In a statement, Adam said there's no legal basis for, for limiting his authority. Long Island's water supply is at risk,

and one big reason is the many septic tanks and cesspools in the region. The EPA says in new documents have found an illegal cesspool that violated the Clean Water Act in Nassau County at a funeral home. EPA officials allege workers at Whitting funeral home in Glenhead washed in balming tools over drains that went straight to the cesspool. Health officials and environmentalists have said for decades, decades at Long Island needs to modernize its sewer systems to protect the water supply and local seafood industry. Columbia University Science Professor Marcus Hilpert explains the risk septic tanks and cesspools pose.

The sanitary waste can flow out of that holding tank into soil and then potentially can reach round water. Documents show the funeral home agreed to bring its sewage system into compliance. The New York Yankees manager, Aaron Boone, is likely to stick around for another couple of years. The Bronx Bombers say they've inked a two-year contract extension for their bench boss. That means barring anything unforeseen. Boone will be the Yanks skipper through at least the 2027 season. Boone has been managing the Yankees since 2018. Last season, he made it to his first World Series as a manager, although the Yanks were defeated by the L.A. Dodgers. 23 and clear right now, sunny in a high of 32 today, it's going to feel much colder than that.

It's cold as 10 degrees because of those gusting winds out there. And then tonight, clear and cold, low of 20, gusty, feeling like 10 degrees once again. And then on tomorrow, sunny and 38, as we begin a thaw, as you can call it, wind chill, 10 to 20 degrees with a high of 38. It's Friday. That means it's time for our weekly segment of On the Way. Covering all things transportation, that's after the break. On WNYC, I'm Tiffany Hanson. It is time for On the Way.

That's our weekly segment here on All Things Considered breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us is WNYC's transportation reporters, Stephen Nesson, Ramsey Califay, and editor-Eater Leighton Goosa. Hello, gents. Hello. Hello, Tiffany. All right. We've talked a lot in the past, Stephen, about President Trump and whether or not he would make good on his campaign pledge to kill congestion pricing. Obviously, he didn't do it his first week in office, but he has done it here, his second month on the job. You guys have, of course, looked at the already legal challenge going up against this, so tell us about it. So in its letter to the state, the federal Department of Transportation officials essentially argue the Biden administration should have never signed off on the tolling plan in the first place.

They say, for one, the program that the MTA applied for is for highways and doesn't apply to a cordon zone like the central business district. But one lawyer I spoke with says there's no law or rule that states this anywhere. In fact, if you check the federal highway administration's website, it says explicitly that the program the MTA applied to and one approval for, It's called the Value Pricing Pilot Program. It notes value pricing, sometimes called congestion pricing, works by charging drivers on congested roadways during peak periods, which is pretty much what the MTA is doing. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy argues, yeah, that's what the MTA is doing, but he says the way they do it, it's not fair. There's no free pathway into that cordoned area, right? So if you're a middle income or a lower income shopper or worker, you can't access public roads.

by any means into this area, that's flat out wrong. And we've never had a program like that where there's not a free public road to get in to a certain area. Of course, there are many ways to get into Manhattan that don't include driving. And he talks about middle and lower income people, but the vast majority of them in New York City, like millions of people that get into Manhattan every day, do it via public transportation,

which is, of course, improved by congestion pricing with faster buses and funding for subways. Clay, are the tolls going to, away. Tiffany. For now they're going to stay on. Despite all this order and language from the Trump administration and Trump himself on Twitter and social media, you call it, said long-lived the king after killing these yesterday. They're going to stay on because it's unclear if the move is legal. So, but we're going to find out very short order, as Stephen kind of explained, all the background here. The MTA almost immediately went to the federal courts and sued

to try and stop the U.S. DOT's revocal of this. The letter from the DOT doesn't have very much by mechanisms for the MTA stopped collecting these tolls. They have this vast system of toll readers all over Manhattan to enforce the charges against drivers. All that the federal government's letter, all that Duffy's letter said was, quote, he wants to work with the MTA, unquote, an orderly cessation of toll operations for congestion pricing. But again, the MTA and Governor Hockel says they already have an agreement with the federal DOT, under from the Biden that dates of the Biden administration and that they have no plans to stop collecting the tolls until or unless a federal judge tells them to stop.

Stephen, what I'm hearing from you guys is this is all up to a judge. Well, and not just any judge. The judge that will be hearing the MTA's counter lawsuit to Trump's action is Judge Lewis Lyman. Lyman was appointed by Trump to the Southern District in 2019. But don't read too much into that in that, you know, he's already ruled in favor once of congestion pricing in a previous lawsuit. suit. He also ruled the Trump's former attorney, former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, must liquidate his assets to pay that Georgia poll worker defamation suit. But, you know, the Trump administration will argue that it can revoke the agreement that previous administrations have made. But lawyers say that's actually a pretty high bar. Most judges don't just reverse issues because of a new administration. But like a lot of Trump's actions in this first month or so, it's going to play out on the courts and it's not going to happen necessarily at a rapid pace. So it could be sometimes. before we have some resolution to this. Clay, obviously, this is a very divisive topic among New Yorkers.

A lot of people in favor of it. A lot of people really don't like it. What are we hearing right now? Yeah, it's some predictable reactions and some not so predictable reactions. Many Trump supporters are people that have, you know, been upset at having to pay $9 to drive into the zone below 60th Street are celebrating Trump's move, kind of treating him as almost a liberator. But transit and environmental advocates who want to use this.

money to repair the subway, key people from driving in Manhattan, clean up the air, are protesting it. They're calling it a sham. They're calling it a Shanda. But one interesting kind of internet figure who kind of represents like a different zone than you're used to thinking about in these kind of issues that we saw on Twitter yesterday was Kevin Clancy, a fellow by the name of Kevin Clancy. He works for Barstool Sports, goes by the moniker KFC Barstool. He posted a video that said, why is Trump doing this? Kind of jokingly saying, recount the vote.

He's bringing trafficking gridlock back to Manhattan. Barstool Sports isn't really a transit. Coverage, now that covers transit, more part of the manosphere. But it was really interesting how he said, no, this has created less traffic in Manhattan. Please keep the tolls there so that I can drive around faster. Heads up for a KFC Barstool, apparently. All right, Ramsey, you've been talking with people also. What are you hearing?

Yes. I mean, there's also the longtime foe of conjecture. pricing, Congress member and gubernatorial candidate Josh Godheimer, Democrat from New Jersey. He's actually asking for his money back and his, meaning New Jersey's money back. What he wants the MTA to do is to refund New Jersey drivers who have paid the tolls and are continuing to pay. Let's remember, Hockel said the cameras are still on. They're still tolling people today. He also pointed out that something that Hokel said yesterday is that New Jersey drivers aren't forced to come to Manhattan. That's what she said. And he wasn't really happy

about that. In his statement he shared today, he said Hockel quote, owes an apology to hardworking Jersey commuters, and her comments were also a slap in the face to cops, firefighters, teachers, and other groups who might be driving into New York for work. You spoke also with some folks in Staten Island, right? Bus riders, as I understand it, Staten Island, of course, home to some opposition to congestion pricing. Their rep, Nicole Malia Takas, has been very outspoken of the plan. She's praised to the Trump administration for trying to kill it. not just in the recent days, but she's been saying this for quite a while now.

So what are you hearing from her Staten Island constituents? Yeah, she's been talking about this for a while. But what I found very interesting in me reporting this was the timing. So just hours before Trump and his federal DOT pulled their approval for the toll program, I spoke with several Staten Islanders on their way to work on express buses. And they're actually saying that they love the tolls now. What they're saying is that the tolls have gotten so much better since congestion pricing went live. An MTA data kind of supports that. It's showing that express buses like the Sim

8x, Sim 32, Sim 4C are now between three and ten minutes faster every day since the tolls have gone live compared to the same period last year. The irony is that much of Trump's New York voter base is in Staten Island, more than half of the borough voter for him in the 2024 election. An MTA analysis also shows that nearly four times as many Staten Islanders are taking public transit instead of driving into the Manhattan CBD. For example, here's 57-year-old Lynn Rapino from Staten Island when I asked her on the bus if her commute has been faster. Most definitely. I mean, the variety is much shorter.

There's less traffic. It's just a much better commute. I mean, she's saying that both her and her husband who take the express buses were both skeptical of the program beforehand, and now they benefit from it the most. Another express bus commuter, 61-year-old Mari Kortez, is singing the same tune. We have seen a fast commute from Staten Island, especially for the residents of Staten Island that had been a big congestion over the years from transit, from New Jersey, Brooklyn.

This is something that we were waiting for. So just to be clear, I didn't ask if either voted for Trump, but both were very clearly opposed to the tolls before it started. The question is now, if this program gets axed, what's going to happen to their commutes? Early data has suggested that, you know, traffic has gotten better, commute times have gotten better, there's less gridlock. Maybe we go and get returned back to that.

We've been talking with Ramsey Caliphay there, Stephen Nesson, both reporters, transit reporters here at WNYC, and of course our editor, Clayton Goosa as well. Thanks again, jents. You can, by the way, sign up for On the Way the newsletter at gothamist.com slash on the way. See you guys. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC.

Catch us every weekday, three times a day. For your top news headlines and occasional deep. Dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.