$224 MILLION Missing – It Looks Like A Coverup
(UnitedVoice.com) – New York’s ferry system has been losing money for years and needs to be propped up by the city’s taxpayers. Now, it turns out it’s much deeper in the red than the city has been admitting — and former Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) stands accused of fudging the numbers to hide the truth.
The New York City ferry system runs six routes between 25 terminals in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx, but it doesn’t actually move a lot of New Yorkers around. The whole system carries fewer than 150,000 passengers per week; the city’s subway has over 25 million riders per week. With so few passengers, the ferry system doesn’t look like great value for the $534 million New York says it spent on it between 2015 and 2021. In fact, it’s much worse than that. City Comptroller Brad Lander has just audited the city’s spending, and he’s turned up another $224 million in hidden subsidies to the ferry system.
Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration underreported nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in ferry expenditures, a new report said.
— Newsmax (@newsmax) July 7, 2022
Lander’s audit found de Blasio’s administration had spent an extra $180,960,344 in capital expenses plus $43,470,732 on operating costs but hadn’t disclosed that information in the ferry system’s budget. In 2018, the city simply stopped counting capital expenses, letting them sneak through billions in hidden funding.
Maybe the worst thing about this revelation is how the ferry system forces ordinary Americans to subsidize the rich. The average ferry passenger has an annual income between $100,000 and $150,000, so they can easily afford the $2.75 cost of a ferry ride. However, the city’s taxpayers are subsidizing each ride to the tune of $14.57. If wealthy stockbrokers want a ferry ride, they should cover the cost of it themselves.
Copyright 2022, UnitedVoice.com
