Be Suspicious When A Politician Says He Or She Only Wants To Help The Children . . . Or The Environment (Or In Sheldon Silver’s Case, Both!)

So when Assembly Speaker Silver says that the health benefits of congestion pricing “aren’t clear,” what he really means is “there’s no way we’re going to allow you to collect hundreds of millions of dollars, no strings attached, like that troll Robert Moses sitting under the Triborough Bridge,” which in turn can be boiled down to the snappy slogan “Manhattan below 86th Street is not your own little private Triborough Bridge”:

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, in his strongest language yet against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to charge people who drive into the most congested parts of Manhattan during the day, questioned the health benefits of the proposal yesterday. He also suggested that many of the environmental goals Mr. Bloomberg has outlined could be accomplished without congestion pricing.

His comments suggested that two hours of testimony by Mayor Bloomberg at an Assembly hearing on Friday had not swayed the Democrats who control the chamber. Mr. Silver even seemed to outline new concerns, saying that the plan could actually hurt areas with high asthma rates.

“The children of the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem, among others, are the ones who have been exposed to a lot of pollutants,” he said. Not only would those neighborhoods not benefit from the plan, he said, “some of those areas will become parking lots with people driving around the neighborhoods looking for parking spots in order to avoid congestion pricing fees.”

“There is a plan that can be put together that would obviously alleviate the environmental negativism of what takes place in Manhattan right now,” he said, but added that it could be done “with or without” congestion pricing.

. . .

But Mr. Silver’s remarks underscored that he may once again serve as the mayor’s foil in Albany. His opposition doomed the mayor’s plan to build a West Side football stadium for the New York Jets. Asked about parallels to that battle, Mr. Silver harked back to the mayor’s contention then that a Manhattan stadium would not cause undue congestion.

The stadium, Mr. Silver pointed out, would have been “right in the middle of this congested zone.”

“At that time, a year ago, there obviously was no congestion,” he added, facetiously. “We can even put this stadium to attract 100,000 people to come in right in the middle of the zone and there was no problem.”

. . .

Mr. Silver’s skepticism partly reflects the wide concern about the plan among the more than 100 Democrats who control the Assembly.

“I’m sort of torn here,” said Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr., a Bronx Democrat. “On the one hand, I really want to address the environmental issues,” he said, but added that he was concerned that congestion pricing could mean “that folks from other places are going to park their cars in my community” or that the toll would end up being a tax on his constituents without much benefit.

“I think in its present state,” he said, “there are too many concerns, certainly for us to rush to any judgment.”

Mr. Silver said that he was left with “a lot of questions.” But he did not say outright that he would reject the plan, and said that it was “very possible” that an agreement on some environmental plan for the city could be struck by August.