Comment by pudwallabee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pudwallabee | Hacker News Reader

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This has kind of always been the case hasnt it? The governor of the state has special powers over NYC. At least they have stepped in and bullied the city before, usually because the city is broke or has some crisis it needs the state to sort out with a pile of money.

Personally, as a remote worker, it bugs me that she’s doing this to force people to go to work. So basically she wants the pollution and massive waste of resources if someone can sell a bunch of 15 dollar sandwiches and 10 dollar coffees at street level every day. In other words she wants to fleece employees either way.

I feel for the business paying rent based on foot traffic in cities, however they know that if the foot traffic goes away, they can get out of their leases, since at least in malls etc the price per sq foot is based on foot traffic.

But what I have zero interest in is this argument that I have to go to work so that I can be fleeced by businesses every time I walk down the street, so that they can stay in business. That is not my problem. Its pretty insulting given how much better for the environment and people’s personal lives it is to work remotely to treat us like a bunch of chickens going through a toll gate.

Progressive companies that know the future have already let their leases go and gone full remote. More will follow. There will be no back to office.

> This has kind of always been the case hasnt it? The governor of the state has special powers over NYC. At least they have stepped in and bullied the city before, usually because the city is broke or has some crisis it needs the state to sort out with a pile of money.

To the best of my knowledge, the governor of New York absolutely does not have "special powers" over NYC. NYC's boroughs are normal municipalities for the purposes of state law.

You might be thinking of the MTA, which was formed as an independent state corporation after the city's bankruptcy. This is a source of persistent local funding headaches, but is not a "special power": the MTA's board is intentionally not fully appointed by the governor, to prevent exactly this kind of unilateral maneuvering[1].

I don't really think this has anything to do with remote work or RTO, etc., either. Congestion pricing was a pre-COVID policy that's been on the table for well over a decade; it's sound policy purely in terms of making the MTA financially sustainable and reducing congestion and air and sound pollution within Manhattan.

[1]: https://new.mta.info/transparency/leadership/board-members

I read the article. She specifically stated that back to work policies of 3 days in the office, with congestion pricing might go back to full remote. There may be different versions of her comments, but thats what I read plainly in the beginning of the article.

I don't understand what your comment has to do with any of the previous ones in this thread: no, she doesn't have the authority, yes, it was on the table pre-COVID, and sure, she mentioned 100% remote work returning (!?) as one of the reasons.

1)The MTA is a state agency under the governor and not the mayor 2) The state has had special powers over the budget of the city since the state bailed out the city financially during the 70s

The MTA is not a state agency at all; it’s a public corporation owned fully by the state. The governor has the ability to appoint some members of the MTA board, but can only appoint a minority of members.

I’m not aware of any special powers still in effect; it would be good to have a link for that.

A distinction without a difference. Corporations and authorities owned but the state are state agencies, the confusion on this point is a feature by their investor, Robert Moses, to give himself maximum power and minimum oversight. As to state control over the city- it's in Title IX of the NYS Constitution

It’s a distinction with a significant difference: the MTA’s board has a unique fiduciary duty to the Authority that a state agency’s leadership does not have. As noted above, it is also not a “purely” state-level authority, unlike the type Moses was fond of creating (which is among the reasons he opposed merging NYCT into it).

Title IX of the NYS Constitution describes the general terms of home rule, including the rules that govern all counties, towns, and cities within the state. I can’t find an explicit reference anywhere to NYC or its countries anywhere within that title, so I don’t know which section you think implies “special powers.”

Title IX includes a "state interest" clause which the courts have interpreted to mean that state can stick it's nose into any local issue it wants to.

Okay. That isn't a "special powers for NYC" clause, that's a generic "home rule is not absolute" clause. Nobody has said or implied otherwise; the operative question was whether NYC is any different from other municipalities in terms of limits on the scope of its home rule.

(If anything, NYC is afforded an unusual degree of home rule relative to other municipalities in NY, as evidenced by the fact that it's really 5 counties in a trenchcoat.)

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