Cuomo administration may override NYC's new worker scheduling rules

BYKENNETH LOVETT

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

May 29, 2017

ALBANY - The Cuomo administration could be getting ready to bigfoot the city again — this time over worker scheduling rules.

The state Labor Department is preparing a set of regulations that sources say will preempt provisions recently approved by the City Council and expected to be signed into law by Mayor de Blasio this week.

In some cases, the state regulations being developed will go further than the City Council bills, while in others they will be weaker, sources briefed on the matter said.

“It’s great for the state to do something on this, but it has to be at least as good as what was done in the city and hopefully even better,” one source said.

Cuomo’s regulations, which are still being worked on, would actually cover all minimum-wage workers whereas the City Council bills focus just on fast food and retail employees, the source said.

The state regs would expand the current requirement that some employees who show up for work be paid a certain amount of money if they are sent home.

Like with the city bills, the state rules being considered would guarantee employees extra money if shifts are canceled within a two-week period. But unlike with the city bills, the extra pay would not be attached to shifts added to someone’s schedule during that time, the source said.

Unlike the City Council bills that would mandate that retail stores give employees at least three days’ notice of their schedules, the state regulations under development would not bar the practice that requires employees to be on call until they are told whether they are needed that day, sources said.

Also unlike the City Council plan, the emerging state rules would not require that existing part-time employees be offered hours before a business seeks help from the outside.

Cuomo officials, according to one source, said that the state regs would “preempt” whatever the city is set to put in place, something that has workplace fairness advocates worried. They say the regulations should be a baseline and allow localities like the city to impose tougher requirements if they want.

“They’re done; they’re real,” the advocate said of the city rules. “We’re very anxious to see them go into effect. They’re very broad protections for the workers who are covered.”

Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said that the state regulations stem from an exploited workers task force the governor created last summer.

“They’ve been coordinating with stakeholders and regulations will be comprehensive and tailored to address the problems associated with on-call scheduling across New York and will be available for public comment shortly,” he said.

Ted Potrikus, president of the Retail Council of New York State, said he hasn’t been briefed on what is currently under discussion, but “I would welcome statewide regulations.

“There’s clearly room for improvement, but the last thing we need is New York City doing something and then Westchester County doing something different and then Nassau County,” he said.

Thanks to Trump, Germany says it can’t rely on the United States. What does that mean?

By Henry Farrell 

May 28, 2017 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a crowd Sunday in southern Germany that Europe can no longer rely on foreign partners.

Merkel on Sunday declared a new chapter in U.S.-European relations after contentious meetings with President Trump last week, saying that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands.”

Offering a tough review in the wake of Trump’s trip to visit E.U., NATO and Group of Seven leaders last week, Merkel told a packed Bavarian beer hall rally that the days when Europe could rely on others was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.”

This is an enormous change in political rhetoric. While the public is more familiar with the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, the German-U.S. relationship has arguably been more important. One of the key purposes of NATO was to embed Germany in an international framework that would prevent it from becoming a threat to European peace as it had been in World War I and World War II. In the words of NATO’s first secretary general, NATO was supposed “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Now, Merkel is suggesting that the Americans aren’t really in, and, by extension, Germany and Europe are likely to take on a much more substantial and independent role than they have in the past 70 years.

This is thanks to Trump

Merkel’s comment about what she has experienced in the past few days is a clear reference to President Trump’s disastrous European tour. Her belief that the United States is no longer a reliable partner is a direct result of Trump’s words and actions. The keystone of NATO is Article 5, which has typically been read as a commitment that in the event that one member of the alliance is attacked, all other members will come to its aid. When Trump visited NATO, he dedicated a plaque to the one time that Article 5 has been invoked — when all members of NATO promised to come to the United States’ support after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. However, Trump did not express his commitment to Article 5 in his speech to NATO, instead lambasting other NATO members for not spending enough money on their militaries. When Trump went on to the Group of Seven meeting in Italy, he declined to recommit to the Paris agreement on climate change, leaving the other six nations to issue a separate statement.

This cements the impression of the United States as an unreliable partner. Trump has ostentatiously refused to express his commitment to an agreement that has been the bulwark of Europe-U.S. security relations over the past three generations. He also has declined to say that the United States will work within the previously agreed framework on global warming. While many authoritarian states are cheered by Trump’s election and actions, since he is unlikely to press them on human rights and other sore points, traditional U.S. allies are enormously disheartened.

Merkel’s rhetoric is clearly intended to imply that as the transatlantic relationship grows weaker, the European Union will grow stronger. When she links Britain’s departure from the European Union with U.S. unreliability, she suggests that now that Britain is gone, it will be possible for the E.U. to concentrate on getting its own affairs in order, propelled by a stronger relationship between Germany and France. Britain always wanted to keep transatlantic security institutions, such as NATO, strong, which sometimes meant pushing back against giving the E.U. a new security role. Now that Britain is no longer going to be part of the E.U., it will no longer have veto power.

However, Merkel will face her own challenges in building a stronger Europe. Europe faces several internal disagreements. States such as Poland and Hungary agree more with Trump than with Germany on many issues. Southern European countries still resent Germany’s support of painful and (for them) damaging austerity policies. If Germany wants to cooperate with France on security, France is likely to look to Germany to make concessions on economic governance and spending. Although Merkel has recently hinted that such concessions might be possible, they will be controversial with other German politicians (including senior members of her party) and perhaps with the German public. Finally, the criticisms offered by Trump (and many U.S. leaders before him) are not entirely wrong — European states spend much less on their militaries than the United States does on its military and have effectively outsourced much of their defense to U.S. armed forces.

Still, it is important to note that Merkel’s temperament is the polar opposite of Trump’s. She is highly cautious. This speech is not an impulsive move. Instead, Merkel is starting to make the case for a different E.U., one that is stronger, more self-reliant and disinclined to look to the United States for leadership. If she wins the upcoming German election decisively and is able to secure enough agreement from other European states to isolate the naysayers, she may set in motion a substantial long-term shift in the E.U.-U.S. relationship.

Trump’s election may have long term global consequences

People have not yet seriously begun to think through the consequences of Trump’s election for global politics. In some parts of the world, it is creating great opportunities. States whose interests clash with the United States may now have opportunities to win gains while the United States, the global hegemony, is distracted with its internal crises. In other parts of the world, allies are likely to recalibrate their behavior, and in particular their dependence on the United States. They will not want their security to entirely rely on a country that can elect a president as erratic as Trump is and hence will start to hedge their bets. If the current U.S. administration has decided that it no longer needs to rely on allies as much as in the past, those allies are deciding that they cannot rely on the U.S. anymore and are starting to forge their own arrangements, which will diminish the U.S. ability to influence their actions and decisions.

Labor unions file suit to block right-to-work law

Tom Loftus , @TomLoftus_CJ

May 25, 2017

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Two labor groups on Thursday filed suit to strike down Kentucky’s new right-to-work law.

The law, House Bill 1 of the 2017 legislative session, bans the requiring of workers to join a union or pay union dues as a condition for holding a job in a union workplace.

In a 19-page complaint filed in Franklin Circuit Court, The Kentucky State AFL-CIO and Teamsters Local 89 claim the law amounts to an unconstitutional “taking” from labor organizations who are required to provide services to all workers in a union shop, even those who choose not to pay dues under the new law.

“It is a law that is directly targeted toward unions to weaken our ability to represent our workers and obtain good collective bargaining agreements and maintain good wage rates,” Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan said at a news conference. “It’s part of that low-wage model of economic development that has been brought in by Gov. (Matt) Bevin and his cronies.”

The lawsuit names Bevin and Labor Secretary Derrick Ramsey as the defendants.

Governor’s Office spokeswoman Amanda Stamper responded to the lawsuit by saying the two labor groups were “playing political games.”

Stamper said in a statement, “This frivolous lawsuit threatens to hurt Kentucky’s families, robbing them of high-paying job opportunities – a good example of which are the 550 jobs coming to northeastern Kentucky,” Stamper said.

Stamper was referring to the recent announcement by Braidy Industries to locate an aluminum plant to Greenup County. The chief executive of the company said he would not have considered Kentucky without a right-to-work law.

For decades, the law was a priority for the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and many Republicans who say that it will create many jobs because it will make the state more attractive to companies looking for locations for new operations. It was passed into law at the end of the first week of the 2017 legislative session when a new Republican House majority joined a long-established Republican Senate to pass a raft of GOP priorities that for years had been blocked by a Democratic House.

Irwin Cutler, a Louisville attorney representing the AFL-CIO, said the law unconstitutionally forces unions to provide benefits of its collective bargaining to "free riders."

Cutler said, "These are people who are getting the benefits of the contract – the wages, the benefits, the protection against unjust termination – and they don’t pay anything for it. That constitutes, under the Kentucky Constitution, an unlawful taking of the services, the property of the labor unions.”

Cutler also said the law discriminates against unions because other organizations are permitted to require dues from all those who benefit from their services.

Currently, 28 states have right-to-work laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Each side of the case pointed to different recent court rulings to bolster their arguments on how the case in Kentucky will turn out.

Cutler cited state circuit court rulings, now under appeal, in West Virginia and Wisconsin where right-to-work laws were struck down as violating the state constitutions.

But Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, released a statement saying that last year, a judge threw out a federal lawsuit challenging the Wisconsin law.

Also last year, Stivers said, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld city right-to-work ordinances in Kentucky.

“I am confident that Kentucky will continue to be a right-to-work state for the foreseeable future,” Stivers said.

Kushner Weighed Creating a Secret Channel With Russia

by Chris Strohm

May 27, 2017

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, considered setting up a secret line of communications between the incoming administration and the Russian government, primarily to discuss a resolution to the crisis in Syria, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Kushner discussed the idea with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak in December, as the Trump team was preparing its transition to the White House after its unexpected election victory a month earlier. The line was never established, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. 

The talks between Kushner and Kislyak at Trump Tower in New York weren’t acknowledged during the transition, and it’s not clear which side called for the meeting. A secret line with Russia could have allowed the Trump transition and Russian officials to communicate outside of the scrutiny of the departing Obama administration.

Trump hasn’t addressed the reports about Kushner. On Saturday, two of Trump’s top advisers said at the Group of Seven meeting in Sicily that they wouldn’t discuss the reports. “We’re not going to comment on Jared. We’re just not going to,” National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn told reporters in a briefing.

FBI Scrutiny

Kushner’s dealings with Russia have drawn the attention of FBI agents conducting an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to a person familiar with the inquiry who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. There’s no indication Kushner, 36, has been designated a target of the probe.

“Mr. Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings. He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry,” Jamie Gorelick, Kushner’s lawyer, said in an emailed statement.

The FBI’s scrutiny of Kushner brings the sprawling probe into Russia’s role during and after last year’s campaign into the heart of the White House. Until now, officials known to be under scrutiny, including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and ex-campaign chief Paul Manafort, have been exiled from Trump’s orbit.

The Washington Post and New York Times reported on the discussions earlier Friday.

Three Contacts

Reuters, meanwhile, citing seven unnamed current and former U.S. officials, reported Friday that Kushner had at least three contacts with the Russian ambassador that he did not previously disclose, including some during the campaign.

“Mr Kushner participated in thousands of calls in this time period,” Gorelick said in an email. “He has no recollection of the calls as described. We have asked (Reuters) for the dates of such alleged calls so we may look into it and respond, but we have not received such information.”

The focus on Kushner will be one of the first issues confronting Trump when he returns from his first overseas trip as president this weekend. Kushner’s meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower last year was eventually disclosed by the White House in March.

Russian Hacking

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last year that Russia used hacking and leaking of emails in an effort to harm Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and ultimately help Trump win. James Comey -- who was fired from his post as FBI director by Trump this month -- told a congressional committee in March that the Federal Bureau of Investigation also was investigating “whether there was any coordination” with Trump’s campaign.

Trump has called the Russia inquiry a “witch hunt” and the talk of a collusion “a total hoax,” although he also has hedged his denials when it comes to those around him.

“I know that I’m not under investigation. Me. Personally,” Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt this month. “I’m not talking about campaigns. I’m not talking about anything else.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked for Kushner to discuss meetings he arranged with Kislyak, including one with Sergey Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, a state-owned Russian development bank. The Obama administration leveled sanctions on the bank after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military campaign in Ukraine in 2014.

Documents Sought

The committee also has asked Trump’s campaign to produce all documents, emails and telephone records going back to the beginning of his run for the White House in June 2015, the Washington Post also reported Friday, citing two unnamed people who were briefed on the request.

Gorkov said in a statement issued by Vnesheconombank earlier this year that his meeting with Kushner was one of a series of meetings with foreign business leaders as part of a strategic review in 2016.

“They discussed existing practices of the development bank’s work, promising areas and industries,” he said in the statement, which was written in Russian. “The meetings took place in the form of a roadshow on VEB’s strategy by 2021 with the representatives of the largest banks and business circles of the US, including head of Kushner Companies Jared Kushner.”

Flynn, who was forced to resign after misleading administration officials about his conversations with Kislyak, this week asserted his Fifth Amendment rights in declining to comply with a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee for documents in its probe into Russian interference, according to senators.

Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, has come under the spotlight for his past dealings with the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The New York Times reported this week that Russian intelligence and political advisers discussed last summer how to exert influence over Trump through his advisers, particularly Flynn and Manafort. The report cited three current and former U.S. officials who weren’t identified.

The FBI’s Russia probe is being overseen by former bureau director Robert Mueller, who was appointed as a special counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after Trump fired Comey.

Explaining the CBO’s vision of health-care catastrophe in the GOP plan

By Glenn Kessler 

May 26, 2017

The new Congressional Budget Office report on the American Health Care Act, the House GOP replacement for Obamacare, demonstrates how difficult it is to craft a complex law that affects one-sixth of the U.S. economy. There are many variables — and unforeseen outcomes — that can undermine even the most carefully crafted policy initiative.

As a service to readers, we are going to explain one surprising element of the CBO report — that in some states, the law’s efforts to protect people with preexisting medical conditions might end up undermining the individual insurance markets so much that effectively there is no protection at all. In explaining some of the possible side effects of the GOP plan, we had cited a Brookings Institution analysis that had suggested that this was a possibility. But now it’s an official report from a nonpartisan budget scorekeeper.

The Facts

The Affordable Care Act operates on the theory that, in the individual market, costs could be spread among a community of people with insurance, in what is called the “community rating.” In other words, healthier people help subsidize the costs for sicker people. (People who get insurance from their employer — which is about half of Americans under 65 — already participate in a group that spreads the risk.)

One of the most disliked parts of the Affordable Care Act is the “individual mandate” requiring Americans to buy insurance. But it was a crucial part of making the law work, along with the preexisting conditions ban and tax subsidies to make the law affordable.

So rather than an individual mandate, which acts as a penalty, Republicans replaced it with a continuous coverage provision under which a person faces a 30 percent rate increase for one year if he or she has a lapse in coverage of longer than 53 days. This provision is intended as an incentive for people to keep up their insurance.

After the first attempt to pass the law in March failed, Republicans attracted more votes by adding an amendment, authored by Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), that instead allows states to seek individual waivers from the law. One possible waiver would replace the continuous coverage provision so that insurance companies for one year could consider a person’s health status when writing policies in the individual market. Another possible waiver would allow the state to replace a federal essential benefits package with a more narrowly tailored package of benefits, again limited to the individual and small-group markets.

The theory is that removing sicker people from the markets and allowing policies with skimpier options would result in lower overall premiums.

On paper, a person living in a state that sought waivers would only be affected if they had a lapse in health coverage for longer than 63 days and they had a preexisting condition. Then, for a period of one year, a person who fell into this category would face insurance rates that could be based on their individual condition. After that, they would once again get the lower community-pool rates. The AHCA sets aside billions of dollars to help pay for insurance for people who find themselves unable to pay their bills when they are stuck in that one-year period between the gap in coverage and getting back to the community rating.

But the CBO says that states that take advantage of these provisions could perversely end up blowing up their insurance markets, leaving people with preexisting conditions with spiraling costs. About one-sixth of the U.S. population was estimated to live in states that would face this problem.

Here’s how it would work (as described on page 28):

First, healthy, younger people would quickly discover that insurance rates are lower if they were rated under their health condition rather than part of the community pool. So they would have an incentive to have a 63-day lapse in coverage. (The CBO also notes that “insurers and states might have difficulty verifying that an applicant did not have continuous coverage.”)

Second, as more and more healthy people discovered that their rates would be lower when they are rated on their medical status, they would seek to stay on those plans. “Such a waiver would potentially allow the spread of medical underwriting to the entire nongroup market in a state rather than limiting it to those who did not have continuous coverage,” the CBO said.

Meanwhile, the community-rated plans increasingly would be stuck with sicker and unhealthy people. So the average costs in the community pool would jump substantially and spiral ever higher. Thus, even if people with preexisting conditions get back to the community pool after a year being rated on their medical condition, they would find that premiums are still sky-high.

Eventually, the CBO said, community-rated “premiums would be so high in some areas that the plans would have no enrollment. Such a market would be similar to the nongroup market before the enactment of the ACA, in which premiums were underwritten and plans often included high deductibles and limits on insurers’ payments and people with high expected medical costs were often unable to obtain coverage.”

The CBO was highly skeptical that GOP legislation provided enough funding for states to offer assistance to people who could not afford insurance. “Over time, less healthy individuals (including those with preexisting or newly acquired medical conditions) would be unable to purchase comprehensive coverage with premiums close to those under current law and might not be able to purchase coverage at all,” the CBO said.

In effect, the CBO says, in the states that took full advantage of the possible waivers, the guarantee that preexisting conditions is protected would be so undermined that it would be worthless.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters May 25 he did not accept this analysis. “We just think it’s a lot smarter to directly subsidize the care for people with catastrophic illnesses,” he said, arguing that states in addition to the federal government would contribute billions of dollars to help people with preexisting conditions. “You don’t look at the risk share or risk pool idea federal alone. Remember, the states will also do some of the lifting,” he said.

The Bottom Line

While President Trump and other Republicans frequently say Obamacare is collapsing, CBO said that the Obamacare markets are stable — though it said uncertainty over Trump administration and congressional policies could lead some insurance companies to leave the market. CBO also said markets would probably be stable in most of the country under the GOP replacement plan. But it predicted that in areas where one-sixth of the population lives, the individual market would quickly become unstable after 2020 — precisely the problem that the GOP legislation is supposed to prevent.

An old Washington joke is that a camel is a horse designed by a congressional committee. In trying to solve one problem, Republicans may have opened the door to others.

Trump's Go-To Lawyer Kasowitz: A Pit Bull Loyal to the Boss

by Bob Van Voris and Patricia Hurtado

May 24, 2017

He’s not a criminal defense lawyer. He’s not attuned to the ways of Washington. And he’s not from a white-shoe law firm.

What Marc E. Kasowitz is is a bare-knuckled litigator, a fiercely loyal defender of President Donald Trump and an expert at maneuvering through high-profile legal brawls such as the sexual harassment scandal engulfing former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

It’s no surprise that Trump has turned to Kasowitz -- again. This time, Kasowitz will defend the president in an investigation that could make or break the presidency: an independent counsel’s wide-ranging probe into Trump’s campaign and Russian interference in the election. He’ll quarterback a legal team that is certain to expand as former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s scrutiny intensifies.

"He’s a great lawyer," said Kenneth Haber, general counsel of Douglas Elliman Realty, a Kasowitz client. "He has very good judgment."

Kasowitz, the managing partner at Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, has built a lucrative practice with a focus on commercial litigation, real estate, bankruptcy and securities law. The firm has more than 250 lawyers in Manhattan and across the country. Clients have ranged from property investors to insurers including ACA Financial Guaranty Corp and MBIA Inc.

Lawyers in the firm’s investigations, compliance and white-collar defense unit have defended Hilton Worldwide Holdings and MF Global Holdings, according to the firm’s website. Another client is Sberbank PJSC, the Russian state-controlled behemoth, which is accused in a lawsuit in Manhattan of aiding a corporate raid of a granite company.

Some have turned to Kasowitz because of his pit bull-like advocacy. Before O’Reilly’s firing last month amid sexual harassment allegations, Kasowitz said the TV host was the victim of “character assassination” not seen since McCarthyism. A client, speaking confidentially, said Kasowitz thrives on legal combat and is the type of attorney people turn to when seeking to intimidate the other side.

Yale, Cornell

A graduate of Yale University and Cornell University law school, Kasowitz on his website includes news coverage calling him the “toughest lawyer on Wall Street” and an “uberlitigator."

The firm has had its share of controversy. In 2008, after a recently departed partner brought a $90 million defamation suit against the firm, the law firm accused the lawyer of sexually harassing at least a dozen female employees with sexual propositions and innuendo. The cases were dismissed.

Kasowitz represented Biovail Technologies, the pharmaceutical company later acquired by Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., in a suit accusing short-sellers including Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital of fraud. Biovail fired Kasowitz in 2007 over the firm’s use of documents in violation of a protective order.

Calls to Kasowitz weren’t returned.

Trump has repeatedly looked to Kasowitz Benson for support in his young presidency. David Friedman, a partner there, was named as Trump’s ambassador to Israel. Edward E. McNally, another partner, is said to be a leading candidate for the high-profile post of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan. And former U.S. senator and vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, who is of counsel to the firm, had been on the short list for FBI director.

Kasowitz says prominently on his firm’s website that his “notable representations" include Trump “in a wide range of litigation matters for over 15 years.” Together, Trump and Kasowitz have battled state regulators, real estate partners and journalists. Here’s a look at some of the cases where they went to court together:

• A former “Apprentice” contestant, Summer Zervos, last year accused Trump of making multiple unwanted sexual advances before he became president. She sued him for defamation after he said she was lying about “phony” abuse. The case is pending.
• Kasowitz helped handle last year’s appeal of a fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over Trump University. Trump lost the appeal and agreed after the 2016 presidential election to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits tied to the defunct program.
• In 2006, Kasowitz represented Trump in a $5 billion defamation suit against Timothy O’Brien, who wrote "TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald," claiming the author had misrepresented Trump’s net worth by placing it at an estimated $250 million rather than more than $5 billion. A judge threw the case out in 2009 in a decision that was later upheld on appeal. O’Brien, at the time a reporter for The New York Times, is now an executive editor of Bloomberg Gadfly and Bloomberg View.
• As part of the O’Brien case, Kasowitz convinced a judge to order New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to sit for a deposition. Kasowitz and the newspaper squared off again last year during the campaign when the lawyer wrote a letter demanding a retraction and an apology for an article with allegations from two women that Trump had inappropriately touched them years before. David McCraw, a lawyer for the newspaper, sent Kasowitz a letter refusing and saying if Trump disagreed, "We welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.
• In 2005, Kasowitz’s firm represented Trump in a suit against his business partners in the $1.76 billion sale of the Riverside South development on Manhattan’s Upper West side, saying they ignored offers for as much as $3 billion. A judge dismissed the claims the next year.

Cuomo Steps Into Transit Fray With Ideas for After ‘Summer of Hell’

By EMMA G. PITZSIMMONS and PATRICK MCGEEHAN

MAY 23, 2017

Facing a torrent of criticism for failing to address New York City’s deteriorating transit system, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday acknowledged that the region’s mounting infrastructure problems had reached a crisis level and said he would shoulder the responsibility for addressing them.

But Mr. Cuomo’s proposals, outlined at a speech in Manhattan, showed how much he is still grappling with the scope of the problem. He offered a $1 million prize for new ideas to improve the subways; he ruminated on different ownership of Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, from a private operator to New York State; and he warned that in the next few weeks the transportation situation was going to get much worse.

Mr. Cuomo said the looming track repairs at Penn Station, a consequence of age and neglect, would create a “summer of hell” for commuters that required a level of regional coordination on par with the response to Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“We have six weeks to prepare for a potential crisis,” Mr. Cuomo said, referring to the Penn Station repairs set to begin in July and continue into August. “Our obligation as elected officials is to provide the leadership.”

A short time later in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie revealed that the repairs meant that New Jersey Transit’s second-busiest line could not use Penn Station, the nation’s busiest railroad terminal, which Amtrak owns and shares with New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road.

Mr. Christie, at a news conference in Trenton, raised alarms about how his state would cope with the disruption, and he mounted a blistering attack on Amtrak, calling the organization dishonest and incompetent.

“We know we can’t trust Amtrak,” Mr. Christie said, several hours after Amtrak had closed an additional track at Penn Station with no warning, causing delays of up to two hours.

In Manhattan, Mr. Cuomo outlined plans to address ballooning subway delays, an issue that he has largely been able to skirt, in part because many frustrated riders do not know that the governor controls the agency that runs New York City’s subway system.

Both Penn Station and the subways have reached such a breaking point, and the anger among riders has risen to such a level, that Mr. Cuomo finally felt compelled to weigh in. His wide-ranging speech was a recognition that neither problem was going away, that neither would be easily fixed and that failing to take them head-on could damage his political fortunes.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat and a source of speculation about a possible run for president in 2020, had received criticism for remaining mostly silent over the city’s subway meltdowns. He controls the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs the subways and the Long Island Rail Road, which will also suffer delays at Penn Station this summer.

Mr. Cuomo proposed a series of ambitious ideas: New York State should consider taking over Penn Station, or the station should be run by a private operator, or by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. As it happens, the Port Authority runs the one transit hub, the main bus terminal in Manhattan, that many travelers find at least as unappealing as Penn Station.

Mr. Cuomo also announced an international competition to solicit ideas about how the subway could run more trains and buy new cars more quickly. Winning proposals would earn a $1 million prize. And Mr. Cuomo said that if the authority needed more money for its five-year capital plan to address subway delays, he would help fight for it at the state and local levels, even though as governor he already has a lot of power over the state’s finances.

An array of elected officials joined Mr. Cuomo onstage and praised his plans, including John J. Flanagan, the Republican State Senate leader, and Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Democratic leader of the New York City Council. Noticeably missing was Mayor Bill de Blasio, a frequent nemesis of the governor, although the city’s transportation commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, did attend.

Some transit advocates have called on Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio to work together to fix the subway. But Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, slammed Mr. Cuomo last week, saying that Mr. Cuomo ran the subways and should “just own up to it.”

After Tuesday’s speech, Ms. Trottenberg, who also serves on the authority’s board, struck a softer tone. “The city is obviously interested in being part of the discussions and being helpful,” she said. “This is all our constituents. We want to make sure they can all have a great transportation system.”

John Raskin, the executive director of the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group that has criticized Mr. Cuomo’s leadership of the authority, welcomed the governor’s attention to the problems.

“Governor Cuomo is taking a vital step, which is to declare that it’s squarely his responsibility to fix the subway,” Mr. Raskin said. “The next question is: What is the actual plan, and where will the governor find the money to pay for it?”

As for Penn Station, Amtrak has proposed its own plan for a private operator to oversee the station’s concourse, but it wants to continue to oversee the tracks. On Tuesday, Amtrak announced that it would use HNTB Corporation to assist with the track work at Penn Station this summer.

“Amtrak is taking every step to ensure that we accomplish this work on schedule over the summer,” Charles W. Moorman, Amtrak’s chief executive, said, adding that Amtrak was not the only one to blame and that all three railroads had underinvested in Penn Station.

Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit are drawing up schedules that will reduce service during rush hours by as much as 20 percent; New Jersey Transit issued a summary of its plans for modified service on Tuesday night.

On Tuesday, Mr. Christie said that all of the trains on the Morris & Essex line that usually run directly to Penn Station would be diverted to Hoboken Terminal. All of those passengers would then have to board PATH trains or ferries to cross the Hudson River into Manhattan.

About 23,000 passengers ride the trains that will be diverted to Hoboken Terminal, said Nancy Snyder, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Transit. Mr. Christie said discounts of up to 63 percent would be offered to rerouted passengers.

On Twitter, Kim Mullaney, a New Jersey Transit commuter, wrote: “At least it’s a discounted fare. I guess I better stock up on sunscreen — I’m gonna need it for that ferry.”

Mr. Cuomo sent a letter to President Trump on Sunday asking him to recognize the situation as an emergency and provide funding for construction and transportation alternatives for commuters. On Monday, Mr. Christie said he had not decided whether he would join Mr. Cuomo’s appeal to Trump.

For Long Island commuters, Mr. Cuomo said he was considering several alternate travel options, including park-and-ride facilities along the Long Island Expressway and high-speed ferries. He said he was creating a task force to examine both short and long-term solutions for Penn Station.

With the coming disruptions at Penn Station, Mr. Cuomo said he was concerned about the impact on the city’s already overburdened transit system.

“The truth is that the subway system is already at its breaking point,” Mr. Cuomo said, “and now trying to compensate for the dysfunction of Penn is just too much.”