From plastic forks to straws, companies and governments alike are making moves to eliminate single-use plastics whenever possible. But when it comes to plastic bags, habits seem a little bit harder to change. Grocery stores across the country continue to automatically bag food in plastic, and many people have not changed their habits as a result. Others choose canvas tote bags instead and favor reusable options. Have you stopped using plastic bags?

Plastic bags–the kind you might find at a grocery store or local retailer–are not biodegradable, meaning they cannot be decomposed by living organisms. According to ThoughtCo, plastic bags take 1,000 years to break down into smaller particles and can continue to pollute soil and water for years after that.

The state’s ban on disposable plastic grocery bags, forcing residents to pay for paper bags or re-use their own on grocery store visits starting March 2020, would reduce the 71,000 tons in plastic bags used annually just in New York City, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

But for many, habits are hard to change. Plus, although they’re “single-use,” plastic bags can serve more than one purpose. A plastic bag can go from holding your groceries to holding your lunch, or it can simply sit in your pantry until you need it.

Scott Stringer wants the DOT to immediately explore taking over the embattled ferry system

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer is calling on the city’s Department of Transportation to explore taking over New York’s recently launched ferry system.

A Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) report found that the six-route NYC Ferry system, which transports fewer people annually than the subway shuttles in one day, receives per-rider taxpayer subsidies that are ten times higher than what NYC Transit receives per straphanger. That subsidy comes to $10.73, and is expected to surge to $24.75 per trip with plans in the works to expand the system to St. George and Coney Island. Meanwhile, the ferry’s operating costs have soared to $57.3 million annually, with city commitments to spend at least $600 million on the nautical network in the next three years.

The CBC report also raised concerns about the system’s lack of transparency; as a private company, San Francisco-based Hornblower is able to evade disclosure requirements typically required of city transportation projects. Last month, Stringer blocked the city’s plans to purchase additional boats from Hornblower after a review of the procurement contract found that taxpayers were being unnecessarily soaked for mounting costs.

City Hall accused the comptroller of playing politics in his calls for the DOT to consider taking control of the ferry's six routes.

Citing a lack of transparency and “exploding” costs, Comptroller Scott Stringer wants the city to consider taking over NYC Ferry operations.

The private company Hornblower currently operates the service with oversight from the city’s Economic Development Corporation — but new reports on NYC Ferry’s remarkably high subsidies and questionable contracts have concerned the comptroller, who suggests placing it under the operation of the Department of Transportation.

NYC Ferry, with its six routes, receives the second-highest taxpayer subsidies of all the city’s mass transit options — trailing just behind express buses — while serving a tiny fraction of commuters, the Citizens Budget Commission found in a report issued last week.

That report came shortly after Stringer blocked the city’s roughly $82 million bid to buy the fleet of 19 NYC Ferry boats from Hornblower — even though the city had initially planned for its ferry operator to purchase and supply its own boats, according to Stringer.

City Controller Scott Stringer thinks New York taxpayers are getting shortchanged by Mayor de Blasio’s beloved NYC Ferry, and he wants the Department of Transportation to look into taking control of the service.

The ferries are managed by the city’s nonprofit Economic Development Corporation. Hornblower, a private company, operates the fleet, and the city reimburses them for the cost of the service, plus a fee they take off the top.

Stringer’s demand comes less than a week after a report from the non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission showed the city coughs up $10.73 in subsidies for every ride taken on the NYC Ferry’s six routes. A single ride costs $2.75, same as the subway.

Stringer said the DOT’s experience running the Staten Island Ferry gives the department the necessary experience to also run the NYC Ferry.

Congestion pricing is going to be reality in New York, where decision makers must now hammer out the variables and decide the course of a policy that is likely to set a precedent for other cities across the country.

Implementation of the plan, included in New York State's fiscal 2020 budget, will require officials to deal with variables ranging from the amount of tolls and time-of-day pricing to which Metropolitan Transportation Authority units receive funding. A six-member Traffic Mobility Review Board will flesh out the tolling details, with 2021 the target date for implementation.

Congestion pricing is going to be reality in New York, where decision makers must now hammer out the variables and decide the course of a policy that is likely to set a precedent for other cities across the country.

Implementation of the plan, included in New York State's fiscal 2020 budget, will require officials to deal with variables ranging from the amount of tolls and time-of-day pricing to which Metropolitan Transportation Authority units receive funding. A six-member Traffic Mobility Review Board will flesh out the tolling details, with 2021 the target date for implementation.

The boats for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature ferry program could soak taxpayers for up to $369 million — a cost that might have been avoided under another operator, which offered to use its own vessels, bidding documents show.

In 2016, the New York City Economic Development Corporation announced it had picked San Francisco-based Hornblower Cruises’ $168.4 million low bid to run the expanding ferry system for at least five years.

The losing team — made up of locals New York Waterway, Billybey and New York Water Taxi — wanted $31.5 million more, but it was a BYOB deal, as in Bring Your Own Boats.

THE CITY’s examination of the bidding documents came as city Comptroller Scott Stringer recently returned the purchase plan for 19 of the new boats to the EDC with a list of questions. It also came as the Citizens Budget Commission issued a report called “Swimming in Subsidies” that portrayed the city’s ferry expansion as an inefficient and expensive undertaking.

At the March 2016 announcement of the selection, then-Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen said that the price difference between Hornblower and the joint proposal was “enough — enough that it mattered.”

The payments for the boats will not come out of the EDC’s coffers, however, but rather from the city’s capital fund, noted Sean Campion of the Citizens Budget Commission.

“It’s effectively shifting those financing costs off of EDC and the public-private partnership and on to the city’s budget as a whole,” Campion told THE CITY.

While the city’s Department of Transportation has long operated the Staten Island Ferry, the EDC oversees the network of six routes known as NYC Ferry.

The CBC cited “several drawbacks” in putting EDC in charge of the new ferry system rather than the transit experts at DOT.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has faced its greatest challenge in a generation as officials have struggled to modernize New York City’s failing subway. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has responded by promising bold solutions to fix the troubled agency and regain the trust of angry riders.

But here are the changes Mr. Cuomo and state lawmakers unveiled this week as part of the new state budget: A reorganization plan due in June, a “forensic audit” of train cars and signals, a group of outside experts who will review major projects and a “debarment process” that would ban contractors who do not finish projects on time.

Maria Doulis, a vice president at the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, said the changes did not address the costs of an upcoming union contract for subway workers or improving work rules to reduce costs. The union, Transport Workers Union Local 100, is a close ally of Mr. Cuomo.

“Increasing the productivity of the work force to be able to perform the work more cost effectively is essential to the success of the M.T.A.,” she said. “I don’t see that part here.”

The legislation did expand the use of “design build,” a construction approach favored by Mr. Cuomo that bundles together the design and construction phases of a project instead of carrying them out separately.

An hour or so after sunrise, the State Legislature on Monday completed a wide-ranging $175.5 billion state budget that will boost school aid despite tough times, create a mandatory cap on property tax levies and infuse cash into transportation systems statewide — including the Long Island Rail Road to improve on-time performance.

Technically, the 2019-20 spending plan came in a wee bit late as lawmakers slid past the midnight deadline for an "on time" budget. Agreements on the massive bills weren’t reached by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders until Sunday, which delayed the hours needed to analyze and debate thousands of pages though go into the budget.

While Cuomo also said the spending plan is sound and balanced in the face of a $3 billion deficit and declining revenues, the independent Citizens Budget Commission said the budget increases spending by more than 3 percent in tough times.

"Unfortunately, the state's leaders did not take sufficient action to protect New Yorkers from fiscal and service impacts of a possible economic downturn," the commission stated Sunday.

New York lawmakers approved a budget that allows for tolls on cars entering midtown Manhattan, increases sales taxes on multimillion-dollar city homes and ushers in a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags. They also capped local property tax increases outside New York City at 2 percent a year, ordered sweeping changes to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and scrapped cash bail requirements that jails thousands a year before trial. The budget, struck over the weekend by Governor Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders, was passed by the Assembly on Monday morning following action in the Senate. "This is probably the broadest, most sweeping state plan that we have done," Cuomo told reporters in Albany on Sunday. "There are a number of national firsts and it really grapples with the tough issues that have been facing this state for a long time."

Bags & Taxes The so-called mansion tax establishes a new scale of graduated levies, starting at 1 percent, usually paid by the buyer, on all New York City apartments selling for $1 million or more. The rate then increases at $2 million and continues to rise until it reaches a top of 4.15 percent on $25 million. It’s expected to raise $365 million, money that would secure about $5 billion in bonds for mass transit. A previous mansion tax imposed a flat 1 percent rate on all apartments starting at $1 million. The state’s ban on disposable plastic grocery bags, forcing residents to pay for paper bags or re-use their own on grocery store visits starting March 2020, would reduce the 71,000 tons in plastic bags used annually just in New York City, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. The law also allows cities and counties to impose five-cent paper bag taxes, with revenue split so three cents goes to the Environmental Protection Fund and two cents to the municipality.

A new budget from New York lawmakers includes a statewide law against single-use plastic bags that are often used by grocery stores and retail businesses -- becoming just the second state in the nation to implement such a ban.

The provision was included in a $175 billion state budget passed by lawmakers Monday.

The plan, though, still allows the use of paper bags for a fee, and environmentalists worry it will drive down the popularity of reusable bags. The Citizens Budget Commission said New York City alone uses 71,000 tons of plastic bags annually.

A statewide ban on single-use plastic bags in New York has been approved as part of the state's $175 billion budget.

New York's legislature approved the budget Monday morning after lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo reached a deal over the weekend. Cuomo said he will sign the budget into law.

Supermarkets and other retailers will be banned from providing single-use plastic bags starting March 1, 2020. Individual counties have the option of charging 5 cents for paper bags, with 2 cents going to local governments and 3 cents to the state's Environmental Protection Fund, according to the Associated Press.

About 23 billion single-use plastic bags are dispensed each year in New York state, according to a report from a state task force. The city of New York alone disposes of 71,000 tons of plastic bags each year, the Citizens Budget Commission said.

Homeowners earning between $250,000 and $500,000 a year will get a check for their STAR rebates this year rather than receiving the savings directly in their school-tax bills.

And that's not all: If any STAR recipient doesn't switch to a check, they won’t get a 2 percent increase in their tax savings this fall.

Critics ripped the changes and the ongoing tinkering with the popular program started in the mid-1990s, saying it is a sleight of hand to alter how the program is counted on the state's ledger.

"But by changing how the program functions, from a discount on a homeowner's property taxes to a state issued ‘personal income tax credit’ that is issued as a check, the state is able to artificially make state spending appear lower than it is," said David Friedfel, director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed group.