Silver Holds the Line-

As the NY Times City Room blog is reporting, it doesn't appear as if Shelly Silver is motivated to return to Albany on Monday to do the mayor's bidding on the congestion tax. What puzzles us is something that our coalition's Walter McCaffrey pointed out at today's press conference by small business opponents of the mayor's plan.

As Walter said, there are something like eight other bids in for the federal money that the mayor says can't be obtained unless New York adopts his congestion traffic tax. Yet no other city has adopted a congestion tax plan. It appears to us that the mayor has painted himself into a corner here. If the city fails to get the federal dollars, it seems to us that this would be a classic example of a self-inflicted wound. The mayor has drawn an unnecessary line in the sand, and he has only himself to blame if failure follows.