New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore.
The Democratic governor is furious with President Trump over the federal government’s continued refusal to help finance a $30 billion infrastructure project benefiting Amtrak assets in New York and New Jersey.
“You’ve marketed yourself as an astute businessman, so how could you be so blind to the obvious national economic urgency of this project?” Cuomo asks in a letter addressed this week to the president.
He adds, “Enough is enough. Enough political vitriol. Enough political games with Senate Minority Leader Schumer so that you can build your useless wall. For the sake of the entire national economy, it’s time to move beyond the reality TV show theatrics and work with us to build the Gateway Tunnel Project.”
The Trump administration has turned down requests to finance the Gateway project, which aims to repair and replace, among other things, deteriorating tunnels under the Hudson River, including a 108-year-old tunnel that has been badly damaged by flooding, according to Bloomberg News, and the Portal Bridge in New Jersey. The Trump administration has turned down requests to fund the endeavor directly. The administration has also “failed to approve permits or sign off on crucial environmental reviews,” according to Crain’s New York Business. The Trump administration has characterized Gateway as a “local project” serving the interests of “local commuters,” arguing further that its funding is, therefore, the responsibility of New York and New Jersey. Most recently, the Federal Transit Administration downgraded the Gateway project from a “medium-high” to “medium-low” priority. This latter action was apparently the final straw for Cuomo, who held a press conference this week assailing Trump personally for his administration’s failure to green light federal funding for the $30 billion infrastructure project.
“I believe it is political retaliation. I believe it is terrible. And I think the president should be called on it and this is what I’m doing today,” the governor told reporters outside the New York state Capitol in Albany, N.Y. “I think this is one of the most egregious cases of governmental recklessness and malpractice.”
Gateway proponents had hoped that the appropriations bill signed by Trump on Feb. 15 would provide the funds necessary for the project. The FTA, however, threw cold water on those hopes immediately with a message that can be summed up best with two words: Fat chance.
“As FTA has always done, the agency considers the comprehensive funding and financing plan proposed for a project when making its discretionary funding decisions, including any Department of Transportation federal loan requests for the project,” a spokesperson for the agency said in February. “In other words, no change was made by this bill to FTA’s loan-consideration policies.”
Some of the repair work on Amtrak’s Boston-to-Washington Northeast Corridor has already begun, including the $1.5 billion replacement of the Portal Bridge.
Previously, under former President Barack Obama, the Department of Transportation had arranged to “split the costs with the state,” Crain’s New York Business reports. The Obama administration also had a representative on the board overseeing the Gateway project.
“Trump has rescinded both,” the report adds.
All of this has left Cuomo seething, going so far as to accuse Trump of harboring a deep and destructive resentment for the states that didn’t vote for him in the 2016 presidential election.
“It’s unconscionable that the sole infrastructure project that your Administration remains focused on is a wall that nobody needs while the economy of the Northeast and the entire nation hands in the balance,” reads the concluding lines to the governor’s letter to Trump.
