See, this is what happens when fiscal gimmicks are played to bail out the state. They will always come back to bite you. What we need to look closely at next is why they decided to keep the tolls…. Another fiscal gimmick by Cuomo and the legislature to bail out the state and not to abide by removing the tolls when the bonds were paid for.

What our representatives should have looked at is how this and the tolls continue to hit the people in WNY the most. We are commuter taxed to death. Most of the major routes we have to use to get back and forth to work are owned by the thruway authority and we pay tolls. No where else from Erie PA to Albany is there a toll road off the main line thruway. But when yopu are only looking out for yourselves and how you can look good by bringing back million for the waterfront, who cares who pays for it, right?

Thruway/canal gimmick bites back 16 years later

ALBANY — At the State Capitol, bending with the times is a practiced art form.

Consider July 28, 1992, when the State Legislature overwhelmingly approved a bill that moved the cost of running New York’s canal system from the state’s general fund budget to the ledgers of the Thruway Authority.

Looking for creative ways to help balance the budget during tough fiscal times, the Legislature and then-Gov. Mario M. Cuomo dismissed the handful of critics who called it a fiscal gimmick that would someday come back to haunt them.

That day has arrived. Legislators are now looking for ways to block a planned Thruway toll increase that would not be necessary if it were not for that 1992 legislation that moved the canal onto the back of the Thruway toll-payers.

And showing that officeholders in Albany are flexible, try asking now who voted for that gimmick 16 years ago. How about Thomas P. DiNapoli?

As a Democratic assemblyman in 1992, he voted to put the cost of operating the canal under the Thruway Authority. But last month, in his new job as state comptroller, he issued a scathing audit of the Thruway’s planned toll increase and said that it is time to end the agency’s control of the canal system.

How about George E. Pataki?

As a little-known Republican assemblyman in 1992, he also voted for the switch. And during his 12 years as governor, succeeding Cuomo, he took advantage of the canal shift to help balance his own budgets. It wasn’t until 2006, his last year in office, that Pataki proposed undoing the 1992 bill.

Or how about almost every single member of the legislative delegation from Western New York?

They were lured to vote for the switch in part because the bill promised to deliver about $15 million for a couple of local waterfront projects. Today, some of those lawmakers still in office are leading the charge to reverse the legislation they voted for in 1992.

“In hindsight, I’ll admit I regret that vote,” said Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, who recently called for a task force to study how the canal system can be run outside the Thruway Authority.

Among those listed as cosponsors of the 1992 bill were legislators such as current State Sens. Dale M. Volker, R-Depew, and William T. Stachowski, D-Buffalo, and Assemblymen Hoyt and Robin L. Schimminger, D-Kenmore. Others included former legislators Arthur O. Eve, Paul A. Tokasz, Richard J. Keane, Francis J. Pordum, Joseph T. Pillittere, Vincent J. Graber, John B. Sheffer II and Anthony M. Masiello.

Assemblyman William L. Parment, D-Jamestown, is the only Western New York lawmaker still in office who voted against the 1992 bill.

With the birth of the canal fiscal gimmick, state officials found a handy way to pay for running the long-ignored canal system. No longer would all New Yorkers pay for the upkeep of the Erie Canal and other waterways. From then on, only Thruway drivers would have to pick up the canal tab.

During the floor debate that day in the Assembly and Senate, only a few voices among the 211 members rose to condemn the unfairness of such an idea, according to state records.

“There is no relationship between those projects and traveling on the Thruway, and I think it’s very unfair to charge the people this money,” then-Assemblyman Edward C. Sullivan, D-Manhattan, told his colleagues that day.

Then-Sen. L. Paul Kehoe, a Wayne County Republican, said he could “not find any justification” for “singling out” Thruway users to pay the canal costs. He correctly predicted that canal user fees imposed on boaters would not come close to covering the canal’s expenses.

“That money is not going to come from anywhere other than from the people who use the Thruway,” he said.

Sheffer, who led the Senate floor debate pushing the bill he authored, sought to allay his colleagues’ concerns. He said the bill required three funding sources for the canal, so the Thruway, canal user fees and the state’s general fund would still be adding in money.

But it didn’t work out that way.

Since 1992, the Thruway — courtesy of its tollpayers — has spent $716.5 million on operations and debt for the canal.

In that time, the canal system raised just $22.9 million on its own. Recreational boaters have not had to pay any user fees for the last two years, and the last year they did — 2005 — the boater fees raised only $245,430. That’s what the Thruway collected every six hours from motorists on its highway last year, when total annual tolls reached $540 million.

Most significantly, while the canals have received federal and other sources of money totaling $150.4 million, not a penny of money from the state general fund — taxpayers — has gone to the canals since 1992, according to Thruway officials.

Concerns discounted

Over in the Assembly, Michael J. Bragman, who at the time represented Syracuse and was the bill’s lead sponsor in that chamber, talked in 1992 of the Thruway being a “stable funding source” for the canals. He talked of huge surpluses in future years at the Thruway and the 6,000 jobs the bill would create.

Those predictions didn’t work out, either.

The few concerns were brushed aside. The bill passed, 100-38, in the Assembly and, 43-15, in the Senate.

In fact, much of the criticism at the time was not about the fiscal sleight of hand being performed through the agency switch. Instead, the debate took on a “What about us?” argument.

In the bill transferring the canal operations to the Thruway, language was inserted — to lure upstate legislators’ support — providing about $15 million for Buffalo-area waterfront projects, as well as projects in Syracuse and Orange County. That led lawmakers from other regions to ask why money wasn’t going to their areas.

Among the other burning issues raised during the floor debate were concerns that boater user fees for the canal not be too high and that unions still represent canal workers, and questions about a provision requiring the Thruway to pay the state $20 million for the rights to take over the canal costs.

The Cuomo administration, too, was excited about the bill. The governor’s economic-development office said the legislation “embodies a creative, forward- thinking and fiscally responsible strategy to revitalize the state’s economy, stimulate tourism and improve transportation throughout upstate New York.”

Toll data not shared

Fast-forward to 2008. Thruway officials now say they need to raise tolls in July and again twice over the next year and a half to pay for needed improvements along the 426-mile highway system. Coincidentally or not, the higher tolls will bring in about the same amount of money that the canal system costs the Thruway to operate — $80 million annually.

The state comptroller talked of the difficult fiscal challenges facing the state in 1992 that helped drive the canal bill.

“There were probably a lot of things we decided to do as a state, if we had the luxury of easier times, we would have chose not to do,” DiNapoli said last week.

But DiNapoli added that lawmakers in 1992 saw the transfer of paying for the canal system as a way to not only help the budget, but to revitalize the waterway system and create new economic-development opportunities upstate.

Volker, who now supports removing the canal system operations from the Thruway Authority, said he backed the original bill because it did not envision the Thruway being the only cash cow for the canals. He said Pataki’s budget office broke the deal to keep state money flowing to the canals to supplement Thruway funding. Also, he said the idea was to make the canal system self-sufficient — something that never happened.

“We know [budget officials] reneged on the agreement, and it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to,” he said.

Schimminger said that no matter what agency controls it, New Yorkers — one way or another — will have to fund the canal system. “The Erie Canal is a vital and significant state resource,” he said.

Information about the effect on future tolls was never shared in 1992, Stachowski said, and lawmakers were told how tourism and other ideas would help make the canals more self-sufficient.

“It didn’t work out the way we thought it would,” he said.

Now he has a bill to study the entire Thruway structure and gather financial information to see what should happen to entities such as the canal system.

“From the information we had at the time,” Stachowski said of the 1992 approach to funding the canal system, “it seemed like a good place to put it.”

tprecious@buffnews.com

var sc_project=1609654; var sc_invisible=0; var sc_partition=15; var sc_security=”26e26d49″;