Cuomo’s outrageous speed-camera cash grab

Gov. Cuomo is playing another fast one on school-zone speed cameras: His plan to restore and expand the city’s successful program would . . . grab the ticket money for the MTA.

Even more absurd, the gov’s budget director, Robert Mujica, claims Cuomo linked the two issues “to ensure the Legislature does not dismiss them out of hand.”

That’s ridiculous: Speaker Carl Heastie’s Assembly is firmly behind the speed-cam program, and the Senate is surely on board, too. The only barrier to expanding the program last year was a couple of Senate Republicans who’ve now lost all power.

(Indeed, the new Senate majority owes Mayor de Blasio, since he raised half a million for Democratic Senate candidates.)

Yes, Cuomo faces a tricky path in getting more funding for the MTA, but ticket revenue would be barely a drop in the bucket of the agency’s needs. Is the gov actually trying to hold the speed cams hostage to push outer-borough and suburban lawmakers to accept his “congestion pricing” tolls for driving into Manhattan?

If he’s just looking to slap de Blasio around again, on general principle, he missed: As City Council Speaker Corey Johnson notes, this could undermine “the lifesaving speed-camera program,” which gets its funding from the ticket take.

This is far from the only way the gov’s budget proposals seek to dump on the city: Cuomo’s “congestion” proposal also takes all of the fees for the MTA, when past versions gave the city about a third of the cash to help maintain the roads and bridges that actually generate the revenue.

De Blasio thought that complete Democratic control of the Legislature would be a huge win for the city, but Cuomo seems to think it gives him license to loot de Blasio’s coffers, with city taxpayers as the real losers.

It’s up to Heastie and Senate leaders Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Mike Gianaris to stop the gov’s games. Pass a clean speed-cam bill — over Cuomo’s veto, if you have to.

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