screen-shot-2014-06-06-at-9-01-34-am-150x150-9416731“How to Build a $3.4 Billion Bridge in Record Time” is the title of a scheduled discussion featuring Howard P. Milstein, chairman of the state Thruway Authority, at an upcoming Crain’s NY forum on infrastructure issues. 

In fact, work on the New NY Bridge is still in the pile-driving stages, and no one can say whether even the first of the two spans will be completed on schedule in two years, much less whether the whole thing will come in on budget. Moreover, the Cuomo administration still hasn’t produced a financial plan for the project

Under the circumstances, a better title for Milstein’s segment might be: “How to Start Building a Bridge You Hope Will Cost $3.4 Billion More or Less on Time — Without Explaining How You’ll Pay for It.”

For now, the Thruway Authority’s 2014 budget projects a 47 percent increase in targeted toll revenues over the next three years in support of the general bond resolution that was necessary to start work on the bridge. In a bond offering statement last year, the Authority said it would create a “toll and finance task force” by the end of 2013 to identify revenue options to help pay for the project. Six months into 2014, however, the task force still hasn’t been formed.

Maybe Chairman Milstein will use Crain’s appearance to pull a rabbit out of his hat.

About the Author

E.J. McMahon

Edmund J. McMahon is Empire Center's founder and a senior fellow.

Read more by E.J. McMahon

You may also like

NY’s leaky gas taxes

When motorists in New York top off their gas tanks this Labor Day weekend, they’ll be paying an average of about 45 cents per gallon in state and local fuel taxes—the 5th highest total in the nation, and second highest in the Northeast. Read More

Thruway toll credit crashes

In their budget bills, state Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans both had the good sense to reject one of the most egregious fiscal-political gimmicks ever to emerge from Governor Andrew Cuomo: a temporary income tax credit that would have reimbursed a portion of Thruway tolls paid by New York State residents and businesses. Read More

Cuomo’s magical mystery cash

So, how is Governor Andrew Cuomo paying for that $100 billion infrastructure "development initiative" that, as he put in his State of the State message yesterday, "would make Governor Rockefeller jealous"? The answer: for the most part, he actually isn't. Read More

Power for tolls?

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) could be taking the money-losing state Barge Canal off the back of the Thruway Authority under the fiscal 2017 state budget that will be proposed today by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Assuming this Buffalo News report is true, it would explain how Cuomo intends to finance his proposal to freeze Thruway tolls for five years even while building the $4.8 billion Tappan Zee Bridge replacement. Read More

Gone with the windfall

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan for allocating $5.4 billion in windfall funds has survived, almost intact, in the agreed-upon New York State budget for the 2016 fiscal year, which starts April 1. Consistent with Cuomo’s original vision, the final plan shortchanges basic transportation and municipal infrastructure. Read More

A tangled broadband proposal

As part of his plan for allocating $5.4 billion in one-shot windfall funds, Governor Cuomo wants to spend $500 million to expand the availability and capacity of broadband Internet access across New York. But given pressing traditional infrastructure needs, should broadband rate a high priority? Do we really need it? The governor's case, on closer inspection, is less than compelling. Read More

Cuomo’s fungible windfall

Governor Cuomo repeatedly has said that the state’s unprecedented $5.4 billion cash windfall is a “one shot” that should not be spent on recurring expenses such as school aid or agency operations. Yet his proposed budget language might allow him to do just that. Read More

There goes the windfall?

One of the biggest questions heading into New York’s fiscal 2016 Executive Budget presentation was how Governor Andrew Cuomo would choose to allocate an unprecedented, one-shot $5.4 billion windfall "surplus" originating with fines and penalties collected from financial institutions. Now we have the answer: under Cuomo's proposal, less than one-third of the money—barely $1.6 billion—would be absolutely, positively committed to core transportation infrastructure purposes. The rest would go to an assortment of stuff, only some of which would fit into even an extra-broad definition of “infrastructure.” Read More

NY’s leaky gas taxes

Power for tolls?

Gone with the windfall

There goes the windfall?