New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat seeking re-election this year, has proposed a tax on the wealthy to pay for repairs to the city’s deteriorating subway system.
The plan would increase the city’s highest income-tax rate to 4.41 percent from 3.88 percent on earnings above $500,000 for individuals and $1 million for couples. The move would affect about 32,000 people and raise as much as $800 million a year, de Blasio said Monday in a statement.
“Rather than sending the bill to working families and subway and bus riders already feeling the pressure of rising fares and bad service, we are asking the wealthiest in our city to chip in a little extra to help move our transit system into the 21st century,” de Blasio said.
The idea is sure to provoke more disagreement between the mayor and Governor Andrew Cuomo, who have been feuding since de Blasio took office in 2014. Cuomo, also a Democrat, has insisted the city pay half of an $830 million emergency-overhaul proposed last month by the governor’s chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Joseph Lhota. The mayor has said the city already is giving its fair share.
While the city owns the subway system, the MTA runs it. Months of subway breakdowns and delays have contributed to the first decrease in ridership in more than 20 years. Lhota’s plan would add cars on trains to ease overcrowding, remove seats from some cars to increase capacity and step up maintenance.
Lhota rejected the mayor’s tax-the-rich plan, saying that even in the unlikely event that the state legislature approved it, the funding would come too late.
“The mayor has not acknowledged that the MTA needs funding today,” Lhota said in a statement Monday. “The challenges the subways are facing today need immediate resources and solutions right now, not years from now.”
The mayor has failed previously to get state approval to increase taxes on the wealthy, including his 2014 proposal that would have paid for universal all-day pre-kindergarten. Cuomo instead persuaded the legislature to fund the program statewide out of general revenue.
De Blasio’s call for a “mansion tax” on transfers of city apartments above $2 million also failed.
