A freshman congressman explains the Florida way as it relates to effectively stewarding taxpayer dollars to deal with quality-of-life issues in America.
Rep. Jimmy Patronis, R-Fla., offered his expertise in government management, having served as the chief financial officer of Florida. He was elected to Congress on April 1 in a special election in Florida’s 1st Congressional District, comprising the westernmost part of the Florida Panhandle.
He noted that New York state’s failure to properly steward its taxpayer dollars has contributed to a mass exodus of former New Yorkers to the Sunshine State. More than 125,000 people have decamped from the Empire State for Florida in recent years.
Patronis specifically mentioned the stark differences in the amount of taxpayer-funded “overhead” between New York state and Florida.
“New York state’s [about] 18 million people. Florida is [about] 23 million people, but their state budget in New York is twice of that of Florida’s, so they’ve got a tremendous amount of overhead, but at the end of the day, we’re in the best fiscal health we’ve ever been in the history of the state,” the former state CFO said.
“[T]he policies that are taking place in the New York cities, or some of these other blue state areas, have been a driver of sending people to other places where they can keep more of their money,” he said.
Patronis, the newest member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, opined that New York City’s new congestion pricing, a target of criticism by the Trump administration, is just another example of taking people’s money.
“So, when I look at what has taken place in New York with [commuter] congestion prices, you’re getting into people’s pocketbook, and when you start getting more and more into their pocketbook, they will find other ways to keep their money,” Patronis contended, adding, “that means changing their jobs, changing their home, moving.”
New York City’s congestion-pricing scheme charges commuters driving into Manhattan south of 60th Street a $9 toll from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. The charge reduces to $2.25 overnight. Truckers face steeper fees. The plan is to use the revenue raised by the tolls to fund $15 billion worth of transit improvements.
But U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has denounced New York City’s $9 toll on commuters coming into the city as a regressive policy that favors high-income earners.
“This is an elitist policy that allows the rich to use roads traffic-free while the poor are taxed off accessing Manhattan. It’s actually outrageous,” Duffy told The New York Post.
The transportation secretary has also accused the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of giving his department the “runaround” when it comes to his requests for data to combat New York subway crime. Duffy had first asked for data on subway-specific crimes in March and followed up on July 7.
Janno Lieber, the chairman and CEO of the MTA, replied to Duffy’s criticism at a press conference the next day.
“Three months ago, they [U.S. Department of Transportation] asked us for information on security. We sent them 20 pages of information on the good news that crime is down in every significant way, and we talked about all the MTA efforts, cameras and otherwise, more police presence, to get it done,” Lieber said.
A spokesman for the MTA told The Daily Signal that there has been a drop in transit crime since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Patronis, who previously was a member of the Florida Public Service Commission and the Florida House of Representatives, also warned against the premise behind defunding the police, noting that policing is an important component of maintaining other aspects of the quality of life.
“[P]riorities become kind of clouded in those areas where you may have, ‘Well, we’re going to stop funding the police, and we get politically involved,’ and then you start to see the deterioration of those basic services that our taxpayers dollars are going to provide for our communities,” he said.
