Mayor Adams praises Hochul on congestion pricing, insists NYC safe from Trump blowback

Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday hailed Gov.Kathy Hochul for resurrecting the city’s hated congestion pricing plan — and insisted the Big Apple is safe from potential blowback by President-elect Donald Trump.“When you’re a leader, you make tough decisions,” Adams said of Hochul’s revival of the wildly unpopular new commuter tax — which Trump has already vowed to “terminate” in his first week in the White House.Under the plan, which the Democratic governor paused before the November election — then announced it was back on the table barely a week afterward — cars entering Manhattan below 60th Street will be charged a $9 toll starting next year.The toll will jump to $12 by 2028 and spike to the originally planned $15 after 2031.Trump has also maligned the plan by calling it a “business killer.”The Republican New Yorker and Hochul have been sharply at odds about various issues over the years.Still, the pair had a warm phone call after Trump won the Nov.

5 election over Dem Vice President Kamala Harris.In the phone chat, the pols touched on the city’s deteriorating transit infrastructure, and Trump expressed interest on working together with Hochul on fixing up Penn Station and the subways according to sources.He has publicly insisted he has the utmost respect for the Democrat.Hochul has the power to pardon Trump over his May conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal reimbursement of 2016 hush-money payments.Despite the glaring disconnect between Hochul and Trump on congestion pricing, Adams claimed Tuesday that there won’t be a repeat of the kind of tensions and undermining that plagued the president-elect’s first administration and then-Gov.Andrew Cuomo.“We weren’t communicating before.

We were warring and not working together,” Adams said.“When I said, ‘Let’s turn down the temperature, and let’s work together for the city of New York,’ all of a sudden we got a different energy.”Hochul’...