Gov. Cuomo has found a new way to handle disputes with the federal government: Just ignore them.
Team Cuomo’s been doing that for nearly three years now, ever since the feds first warned that his plan to dot New York’s highways with new road signs touting his upstate tourism efforts were illegal.
The signs, clumped in groups of five in rapid succession along a couple of hundred feet of highway, promote the state’s new tourism app and local attractions.
The feds say they’re too wordy and complicated — distracting drivers from keeping their eyes on the road. As one official told USA Today, which broke the story: “Simple signs make for safer journeys.”
The Federal Highway Administration turned down Team Cuomo’s 2013 request to post the experimental signs, saying both state and federal laws have strict rules about what promotional road signs can feature.
Yet Cuomo’s Thruway Authority and Department of Transportation went ahead and put them up anyway. The total cost so far comes to $1.76 million, plus labor.
The feds have issued numerous warnings that the signs are illegal. The state’s response: We don’t agree, so there. (To be fair, DOT did answer Suffolk County’s protest this summer by scaling back the signs.)
But the feds won’t get action unless they get tough. Call it another . . . sign that, as far as Andrew Cuomo is concerned, his word is law.