Tuesday Headlines: Five Years Edition

As campaign season picks up in earnest, the governor is taking a victory lap, commemorating her half-decade in office.

Gov. Hochul’s office marked her fifth anniversary this week with a press release crediting her for “transforming” the state’s infrastructure. Highlights include a “fully funded” MTA capital plan and the nation’s first congestion pricing program. Both deserve a closer read than a press release is built to survive.

Congestion pricing did launch in January 2025, but only after Hochul paused it weeks before its original June 30, 2024 start date, a decision that drew multiple lawsuits and a judge who wasn’t buying that she had solid legal footing to do it. The pause also tore an estimated $15 billion hole in the MTA’s capital plan, which the agency spent much of the following year trying to patch.

As for “fully funded”: the state and city trimmed their expected contributions to the 2025-29 plan by $1 billion apiece, leaving a $3 billion gap MTA officials themselves called “still undefined.” An earlier version of the plan got vetoed by the legislature entirely, with Albany and the governor’s office spending months bickering over whose job it was to close it.

Five years in, the ribbon-cuttings are real. So is everything the announcement left out.

Elsewhere in the Empire State:

• A 12-year-old girl remains in critical but stable condition after she was struck by an SUV while crossing River Road in North Tonawanda. Police say the crash remains under investigation. (Buffalo News)
• In Irondequoit, officials are studying how to revive a commercial corridor with more restaurants, retail and mixed-use development while improving walkability. (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)
• New Yorkers will have another chance next week to weigh in on the state’s updated Active Transportation Plan at a public meeting in Rochester. (WXXI)
• Syracuse will pay $46,000 for temporary access to neighboring property as it demolishes a downtown parking garage. (Syracuse.com)
• Brooklyn Democratic leaders are denouncing a proposed party rules change as a “naked power grab.” (City & State)
• Despite campaign rhetoric, lobbyists say they’re still optimistic about working with Zohran Mamdani if he becomes mayor. (City & State)
• Freshman Assembly Member Gabriella Romero says she’s found success in Albany despite being one of the Legislature’s youngest members and the first Latina elected to represent upstate New York. (State of Politics)
• Advocates are pressing the city to preserve and memorialize a historic Black burial ground in Queens that’s now beneath an NYPD parking lot. (The City Reporter)
• Albany Mayor Dorcey Applyrs drew criticism after leaving for Martha’s Vineyard a day after a gas explosion critically injured two city workers. (New York Post)