Politics
breaking
Trump admin boots gaffe-prone lawyers hours after they uploaded memo admitting plan to kill congestion pricing charge is ‘very unlikely’ to succeed
WASHINGTON — The Department of Transportation announced Thursday it was sidelining prosecutors who claimed the agency’s move to eliminate congestion pricing in New York was “very unlikely” to succeed — after the feds mistakenly divulged their lack of confidence in a court filing.
The Manhattan attorneys have since been replaced by others in the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, according to a DOT spokeswoman, who blasted the Southern District of New York for the “legal malpractice” of leaking internal deliberations about the tolling program.
“Are SDNY lawyers on this case incompetent or was this their attempt to RESIST? At the very least, it’s legal malpractice,” said spokeswoman Halee Dobbins. “It’s sad to see a premier legal organization continue to fall into such disgrace.”
“SDNY’s memo doesn’t represent reality. Kathy Hochul’s congestion pricing war against the working class was hastily approved by the Biden Administration after Donald Trump was elected,” she added.
“Taxpayers already financed the highways that Hochul is now shutting down to the driving public and there is no free alternative. This is unprecedented and illegal. If New York doesn’t shut it down, the Department of Transportation is considering halting projects and funding for the state.”
SDNY spokesman Nicholas Biase acknowledged in a statement that the filing “was a completely honest error and was not intentional in any way.”
Three prosecutors filed the 11-page memo late Wednesday night and it was subsequently deleted from the docket.
“We have been unable to identify a compelling legal argument to support this position,” they wrote, relating past examples of courts granting discretion to local governments for “novel social and economic experiments.”
The assistant US attorneys implied other slightly more viable avenues, such as invoking “changed agency priorities” from the US Office of Management and Budget to end the $9-per-vehicle fee for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy could also argue that congestion pricing is improperly based on funding levels that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) needs — rather than a goal to reduce traffic — or that it breaks federal law because there’s no toll-free alternative for drivers.
But the attorneys noted: “Neither of these reasons … is likely to convince the court.”
On Monday, the transportation secretary had still threatened Gov. Kathy Hochul with “serious consequences” like the pulling of billions of dollars in federal funding for roadway construction projects in New York if she doesn’t back down.
Hochul’s spokesman Avi Small said in a statement Thursday that “the cameras are staying on” — after the governor blew through a second deadline earlier this week for the MTA to stop raking in its tolls.
The Manhattan prosecutors also batted that down, though, noting a “cooperative agreement” between the MTA and the Trump admin “does not have any explicit termination provisions.”
If there’s a change-up in the admin’s approach, that could also prompt another review to “assess the environmental impacts of terminating” the congestion pricing scheme — likely pushing back the deadline again.
The Biden administration had greenlit the congestion tax as part of a DOT pilot program.
