Should Legal Pot Pay For Subway Fixes? NYC Pols Disagree

NEW YORK — A think tank's pitch for funding subway fixes with legal marijuana was quickly embraced Thursday, when a former City Council speaker unveiled her proposal to do just that. But the idea drew skepticism just as quickly, with some officials saying the money should be used to tackle the racial injustices drug enforcement has wrought.

Former Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who is now running for public advocate, wants at least half of the taxes from legal pot to go toward public transit. The money could help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its billions of dollars worth of capital projects and minimize fare hikes, her plan says.

Legalizing and taxing marijuana could generate more than $1 billion in city and state tax revenue each year, a city comptroller's report found in May. Mark-Viverito's plan argues that money could get to the beleaguered MTA more quickly than funding from congestion pricing, a plan to toll vehicles entering parts of Manhattan that she also supports.

"Given the size of New York’s population, the marijuana market here could yield $1.3 billion a year that we can invest in our crumbling MTA," Mark-Viverito, an East Harlem Democrat, said in a statement. "And it's far past time to legalize marijuana — because for years, white New Yorkers have smoked marijuana with no repercussions, while black and brown New Yorkers are arrested."

Mark-Viverito — who first endorsed marijuana legalization in 2014 — released her four-point "Weed for Rails" plan a day after a New York University report proposed funding public transit with pot taxes.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's state Department of Health backed legalizing recreational pot for adults in July. If elected public advocate, Mark-Viverito would push Cuomo and the state Legislature to make the drug legal and create a "lockbox" to make sure at least half the tax revenue goes to public transit.

Legalization should also address the racial impact of pot prohibition by giving minority- and women-owned businesses, as well as nonviolent marijuana offenders, priority for licenses to grow and sell the drug, Mark-Viverito's plan says.

She also supports expunging convictions for those arrested on recreational marijuana charges and creating a fund for nonprofits willing to teach low-income communities business management.

But some politicians — including two of Mark-Viverito's opponents — argue tackling those racial injustices should be the major goal when it comes to spending marijuana money.

"No proposal can be put ahead of the people who have been victimized for decades by the criminalization of black and brown communities as a result of prohibition," said City Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn), who's also among more than a dozen candidates for public advocate.

Black and Hispanic New Yorkers have borne the brunt of pot enforcement in New York City, statistics show. The two ethnic groups accounted for more than 86 percent of marijuana arrests from 2010 to 2017, while white people accounted for just 10.5 percent, according to a report City Comptroller Scott Stringer issued Thursday.

Legalization presents "the perfect opportunity to right a historic wrong," said Councilman Rafael Espinal (D-Brooklyn), another public advocate hopeful. He said the revenue should be invested in public housing, bailing out low-level offenders and economic development programs to help minority- and women-owned marijuana businesses grow.

"Not using the funding for these aims would be a huge missed opportunity and is tone deaf to the historic realities, which make legalizing marijuana necessary in the first place," Espinal said in a statement.

Stringer took a similar stance with his report, which found marijuana arrests have been most heavily concentrated in neighborhoods with high unemployment rates such as Brownsville and Washington Heights.

While it does not explicitly weigh in on giving pot taxes to the MTA, Stringer's report argues a "significant portion" of the revenue should support services such as job placement, substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment in neighborhoods that have the biggest proportions of marijuana-related arrests and meet other criteria.

"This report shows that the City has long targeted communities that are among the most economically insecure, resulting in damaged credit, loss of employment, housing, and more," Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement. "As we move towards creating a legal market that will generate billions of dollars, we have to ensure that we correct historic injustices and backwards policies of the past."

(Lead image: Former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito speaks at a press conference on Thursday. Photo by Mark Lennihan/Associated Press)