A Solid Win For Congestion Pricing

Is it horse trading or something worse? Some council members aren’t sure:

The City Council may have approved congestion pricing Monday, but Council foes were still fighting Mayor Bloom­berg’s traffic fee yesterday, hoping their complaints will be heard in Albany.

The 30-20 vote, they said, was actually a squeaker, sending a message of division to the state Legislature, which must now pass the plan by April 7. To hear them tell it, the days leading up to the vote were filled with arm-twisting and backroom deals.

Last Friday, Brooklyn Council member Lewis Fidler believed the plan couldn’t pass — he counted 29 votes against it.

Horse-trading is expected, he said.

“The ‘we’ll do a project in your district,’ that’s politics,” Fidler said. “But without these deals, there were not 26 votes in favor of this plan. Albany understands that, too.”

Fidler claimed Bloom­berg had offered to hold a fund-raiser for one Council member in exchange for switching sides.

“If other people did that, the U.S. attorney would be called,” he said. “I’m not suggesting it’s criminal, but it’s hypocrisy that can’t be waved off with a Bloomberg-esque wave of the hand.”

. . .

“This isn’t going away,” insisted Queens Council member Tony Avella, another opponent of congestion pricing. “The use of taxpayer dollars to lobby Council members is clearly inappropriate.”

Avella vowed to file Freedom of Information requests for phone records, e-mails and other correspondence from Bloomberg’s office and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who backed the mayor’s plan. “It’s bad government,” he said.