Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens) just missed winning the Democratic nomination to face Michael Bloomberg in the 2005 mayor’s race, and he has already begun fundraising and campaigning for the 2009 race. He was the third of the expected major 2009 mayoral candidates to be a featured guest at a City Hall On/Off the Record Breakfast, speaking at the Commerce Bank flagship location on 42nd Street and Madison Avenue Nov. 13 about “Alternative Transportation and the Future of New York.”
An invite-only crowd heard Weiner discuss his take on congestion pricing, ferries, what he thinks has distinguished Michael Bloomberg as mayor, what he might have done differently if he had won in 2005 and his interest in a possible Senate opening at the end of next year.
Some excerpts from the on the record portion of Weiner’s interview:

Q: Is there a version of congestion pricing that you think might work?
A: I think that the Mayor should be honored for starting the conversation. Now he got the solution wrong. But it’s not that congestion pricing as a notion is wrong. If you look at all of these cities that are eligible for federal funds, under the federal program that this has all been started under, all have congestion pricing. It’s just none of them have this type of big government, cameras on street corners, taking pictures, big administration, big bureaucracy. For example, part of what I’ve proposed is congestion pricing by increasing tolls on the bridges for trucks during certain hours dramatically, and reducing them or even eliminating them at other hours. That is a form of congestion pricing. Having parking meters that charge you more when you come in there to park there at certain times of the day than others is a form of congestion pricing. We mustn’t let the phrase “congestion pricing” mean only what the mayor’s proposal is.

Q: Would you support increasing the tolls for people coming from New Jersey or Connecticut so there would be out-of-state payments into the system?
A: One of the most puzzling elements of the mayor’s proposal is that it actually hits residents of the five boroughs much harder than our suburban friends. It is kind of a wildly counter-intuitive way to deal with the imbalance that has emerged since the elimination of the commuter tax. … I had a very interesting conversation with a member of congress from an affluent part of Connecticut, shortly after the mayor announced his plan. He’s a Republican, so I probably just gave away who it is, and I approached him on the floor of Congress and I said, “You and I should form a Democrat-Republican middle class-upper class coalition to try to stop this plan.” And he says “Tell me a little bit about it,” because he hadn’t been following it as closely as I had. And I said “Well the plan is to charge a tax of eight dollars if you come into the city,” and he thought about it for a moment, and he said “I fully support the plan.” And I said, “Why? Your constituents are going to pay eight dollars.” And he said, “My constituents would pay $80 to keep the riff-raff from your district out of their way during the day.”

Q: You’ve secured federal funding for ferries. How would you want ferries to fit into the city’s public transportation system?
A: One thing that’s sure is that ferries as a market driven business, don’t work. Mass transit is not something that the private sector does, to all of my conservative friends who talked about letting the free market solve our problems. … Give you an example: New York Waterways that lands here on the West Side. They have a pretty profitable business, bringing people back and forth, that short run from New Jersey. They go from a State of New Jersey subsidized parking lot to a state of New York subsidized parking lot. They make an okay amount of money, until they get into the New York Waterway’s buses to bring people to their offices or bring people more close to their offices in midtown and downtown. Then they are losing money hand over fist. ’Cause it’s a difficult thing to do. So what I believe is that ferries, if they are going to be successful as they have been in other cities and states, have to be part of the integrated transportation infrastructure of the city.

Q: Do you think that we should push for home rule of the MTA?
A: Well one of the conversations I tried to start when I ran for mayor in 2005 and I think we should continue everyday and frankly we’ve had a set back with the mayor, is we should want more of our own. you know, we’re adults and whether we’ve shown we can govern the city, it’s remarkable how much of our daily lives is either run by Albany or run by an unelected board or agency. Think of the debates, the big existential debates we’ve had in the city over the last several years: ground zero, port authority, theoretically outside the control, the stadium, had any of us even heard of that agency that finally decided the stadium wasn’t going to be built before that whole discussion? Fare hikes, congestion pricing, the Ratner project in Brooklyn. All of these we have ceded control in a different era to Albany or to unelected boards and agencies that we need to start pushing back. … We should everyday declare a declaration of independence from the control that Albany and so many of these unelected boards and agencies have on us. Look at the salutary effect it’s been when the mayor pushed to get control of the Board of Ed. We shouldn’t stop there.

Q: Back in the very first issue of City Hall that we did in 2006 we did a story called “The New Paradigm” and looked at how Bloomberg has changed the role of mayor. Do you think that he has?
A: There are some things that he’s done that I hope are now going to become part of the new permanent way we do things in this city. … Now, to some degree, he’s done things in the city that no mayor in the future is going to be able to do. He’s cut arts funding, and written large checks to arts organizations. I’m not going to do that. You know, he’s a billionaire, I’m like a thousand-aire or something. I’m not going to have that ability, so I think that a lot of these groups and advocates who got used to the idea that okay, I’ll quietly take a little hit because I know that I’ll also quietly get a little bit back on the back-end, that’s not going to happen with me. But to a large extent I think Mike Bloomberg has done a service to the city by making us realize, and to some degree Giuliani did this as well, that you know these notions of unsolvable problems? Baloney. We can solve problems here.

Q: Other than the difference in arts funding and congestion pricing, if you had won the 2005 election and been inaugurated mayor on January 1, 2006, what would have been different?
A: I’m not sure how useful it is, I’m not campaigning against Mike Bloomberg. I prefer to see this as an opportunity to look forward, we have one mayor at a time. I would have paid much more attention to Ground Zero. I would not have entered into that Faustian bargain with George Pataki, “I’ll get the stadium, you take care of Ground Zero.”I think that, that was a mistake. There are some other things. I would have paid more attention to, the waterfront, perhaps, than Mayor Bloomberg has. I would have focused on this notion of transportation, something that has been an obsession of mine, perhaps sooner. There would have been differences in the way I approached the school system. I would have, and I still think we need to, focus much more on the middle class and those who are struggling to make it into the middle class. You know the mayor once referred to New York City as a “luxury product.”

Q: You have been a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President. If she is elected there will be a senate opening, would you, if Governor Spitzer said to you “Hey, maybe you don’t want to be mayor, maybe you want to join Chuck Schumer in the Senate” what would you say to that?
A: I don’t want the job. House of Representatives is a better job than Senate and mayor is a much better job than Senate.

Q: Why?
A: You know I think part of where politics fails is that, at the end of the day, it does a bad job of closing the gap between the thing that people are talking about at their kitchen table in the morning when they are sending their kids off to school, and the things that they see government talking about up here. And the tension is constantly to be a representative that closes that gap. … I think it’s hard to do that as a kid from Forest Hills or Park Slope when you are talking to people in Syracuse.     CAlternative Transportation and the 2009 Train
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens) just missed winning the Democratic nomination to face Michael Bloomberg in the 2005 mayor’s race, and he has already begun fundraising and campaigning for the 2009 race. He was the third of the expected major 2009 mayoral candidates to be a featured guest at a City Hall On/Off the Record Breakfast, speaking at the Commerce Bank flagship location on 42nd Street and Madison Avenue Nov. 13 about “Alternative Transportation and the Future of New York.”
An invite-only crowd heard Weiner discuss his take on congestion pricing, ferries, what he thinks has distinguished Michael Bloomberg as mayor, what he might have done differently if he had won in 2005 and his interest in a possible Senate opening at the end of next year.
Some excerpts from the on the record portion of Weiner’s interview:

Q: Is there a version of congestion pricing that you think might work?
A: I think that the Mayor should be honored for starting the conversation. Now he got the solution wrong. But it’s not that congestion pricing as a notion is wrong. If you look at all of these cities that are eligible for federal funds, under the federal program that this has all been started under, all have congestion pricing. It’s just none of them have this type of big government, cameras on street corners, taking pictures, big administration, big bureaucracy. For example, part of what I’ve proposed is congestion pricing by increasing tolls on the bridges for trucks during certain hours dramatically, and reducing them or even eliminating them at other hours. That is a form of congestion pricing. Having parking meters that charge you more when you come in there to park there at certain times of the day than others is a form of congestion pricing. We mustn’t let the phrase “congestion pricing” mean only what the mayor’s proposal is.

Q: Would you support increasing the tolls for people coming from New Jersey or Connecticut so there would be out-of-state payments into the system?
A: One of the most puzzling elements of the mayor’s proposal is that it actually hits residents of the five boroughs much harder than our suburban friends. It is kind of a wildly counter-intuitive way to deal with the imbalance that has emerged since the elimination of the commuter tax. … I had a very interesting conversation with a member of congress from an affluent part of Connecticut, shortly after the mayor announced his plan. He’s a Republican, so I probably just gave away who it is, and I approached him on the floor of Congress and I said, “You and I should form a Democrat-Republican middle class-upper class coalition to try to stop this plan.” And he says “Tell me a little bit about it,” because he hadn’t been following it as closely as I had. And I said “Well the plan is to charge a tax of eight dollars if you come into the city,” and he thought about it for a moment, and he said “I fully support the plan.” And I said, “Why? Your constituents are going to pay eight dollars.” And he said, “My constituents would pay $80 to keep the riff-raff from your district out of their way during the day.”

Q: You’ve secured federal funding for ferries. How would you want ferries to fit into the city’s public transportation system?
A: One thing that’s sure is that ferries as a market driven business, don’t work. Mass transit is not something that the private sector does, to all of my conservative friends who talked about letting the free market solve our problems. … Give you an example: New York Waterways that lands here on the West Side. They have a pretty profitable business, bringing people back and forth, that short run from New Jersey. They go from a State of New Jersey subsidized parking lot to a state of New York subsidized parking lot. They make an okay amount of money, until they get into the New York Waterway’s buses to bring people to their offices or bring people more close to their offices in midtown and downtown. Then they are losing money hand over fist. ’Cause it’s a difficult thing to do. So what I believe is that ferries, if they are going to be successful as they have been in other cities and states, have to be part of the integrated transportation infrastructure of the city.

Q: Do you think that we should push for home rule of the MTA?
A: Well one of the conversations I tried to start when I ran for mayor in 2005 and I think we should continue everyday and frankly we’ve had a set back with the mayor, is we should want more of our own. you know, we’re adults and whether we’ve shown we can govern the city, it’s remarkable how much of our daily lives is either run by Albany or run by an unelected board or agency. Think of the debates, the big existential debates we’ve had in the city over the last several years: ground zero, port authority, theoretically outside the control, the stadium, had any of us even heard of that agency that finally decided the stadium wasn’t going to be built before that whole discussion? Fare hikes, congestion pricing, the Ratner project in Brooklyn. All of these we have ceded control in a different era to Albany or to unelected boards and agencies that we need to start pushing back. … We should everyday declare a declaration of independence from the control that Albany and so many of these unelected boards and agencies have on us. Look at the salutary effect it’s been when the mayor pushed to get control of the Board of Ed. We shouldn’t stop there.

Q: Back in the very first issue of City Hall that we did in 2006 we did a story called “The New Paradigm” and looked at how Bloomberg has changed the role of mayor. Do you think that he has?
A: There are some things that he’s done that I hope are now going to become part of the new permanent way we do things in this city. … Now, to some degree, he’s done things in the city that no mayor in the future is going to be able to do. He’s cut arts funding, and written large checks to arts organizations. I’m not going to do that. You know, he’s a billionaire, I’m like a thousand-aire or something. I’m not going to have that ability, so I think that a lot of these groups and advocates who got used to the idea that okay, I’ll quietly take a little hit because I know that I’ll also quietly get a little bit back on the back-end, that’s not going to happen with me. But to a large extent I think Mike Bloomberg has done a service to the city by making us realize, and to some degree Giuliani did this as well, that you know these notions of unsolvable problems? Baloney. We can solve problems here.

Q: Other than the difference in arts funding and congestion pricing, if you had won the 2005 election and been inaugurated mayor on January 1, 2006, what would have been different?
A: I’m not sure how useful it is, I’m not campaigning against Mike Bloomberg. I prefer to see this as an opportunity to look forward, we have one mayor at a time. I would have paid much more attention to Ground Zero. I would not have entered into that Faustian bargain with George Pataki, “I’ll get the stadium, you take care of Ground Zero.”I think that, that was a mistake. There are some other things. I would have paid more attention to, the waterfront, perhaps, than Mayor Bloomberg has. I would have focused on this notion of transportation, something that has been an obsession of mine, perhaps sooner. There would have been differences in the way I approached the school system. I would have, and I still think we need to, focus much more on the middle class and those who are struggling to make it into the middle class. You know the mayor once referred to New York City as a “luxury product.”

Q: You have been a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President. If she is elected there will be a senate opening, would you, if Governor Spitzer said to you “Hey, maybe you don’t want to be mayor, maybe you want to join Chuck Schumer in the Senate” what would you say to that?
A: I don’t want the job. House of Representatives is a better job than Senate and mayor is a much better job than Senate.

Q: Why?
A: You know I think part of where politics fails is that, at the end of the day, it does a bad job of closing the gap between the thing that people are talking about at their kitchen table in the morning when they are sending their kids off to school, and the things that they see government talking about up here. And the tension is constantly to be a representative that closes that gap. … I think it’s hard to do that as a kid from Forest Hills or Park Slope when you are talking to people in Syracuse.

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