Click to Remove Cuomo’s Name, Restore Tappan Zee Bridge Reinvented with Dem’s Support

A Hudson Valley Democrat wants to push the late former governor Mario M. Cuomo—or at least Cuomo’s name—off a bridge.

“Everyone in the Hudson Valley still calls the Tappan Zee Bridge for a reason,” Sen. James Skoufis (D-Woodbury) told The Post of the span, completed in 2018. “It’s a legitimate name.”

Skoufis is adding his political strength to a three-year legislative drive by becoming the main sponsor of a bill to rename the bridge connecting Rockland and Westchester counties after two years in which GOP efforts have landed nowhere in the Democratic-dominated state legislature. supermajority.

The name change will take effect immediately after the bill passes the Senate and State Assembly – which Skoufis hopes to implement before the end of the regular legislative session this June – and is signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“Anytime by June 8th would be great,” Skoufis said of his timetable for moving the bill through the legislature.

That seems far more likely this year as a prominent state Senate Democrat is backing the case, according to first-year Assemblyman John McGowan (R-Pearl River), who is sponsoring the bill in his House, where some Democrats supported it last year.

“The reality is that being a Republican and trying to pass legislation is much more difficult than it is for my colleagues in the majority,” McGowan told The Post. “I will work with anyone, Republican or Democrat. Good ideas are good ideas.”

Skoufis, the first State Senate Democrat to support the bill, replaced former State Senator Mike Martucci, a Republican, as the bill’s primary sponsor in his House.

McGowan, a member of the Republican Party legislature, assumes the role of his predecessor, now Rep. Michael Lawler, who introduced the bill in 2021.

Proponents say the proposal is about much more than their preferred name for a key transportation link.

Disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo forced lawmakers to green-light the “Mario” moniker as part of the legislature’s overnight backroom deal to approve a comprehensive omnibus bill in 2017, with nearly $4 billion in finishing touches. compound.

In exchange for paying tribute to Cuomo’s father, the Republicans received a host of concessions, including increased pension benefits for uniformed rescue workers injured on the job, tax credits on lower Manhattan real estate, three-year extensions to county sales taxes for both northern states. and New York City, up to $50 million in flood relief for Lake Ontario and easing land restrictions in part of the Adirondack Park.

Since then, many New Yorkers have resisted the name change.

“The idea of ​​renaming it after a politician – I don’t think it’s something that people support and there was no involvement in it,” said McGowan, whose neighborhood includes the side of the Rockland Bridge. “There was no public forum where people could share their thoughts before this was done – and it just happened.”

History is also on their side, according to a legislative memo explaining how the roots of the phrase “Tappan Zee” extend even beyond colonial times.

“Dutch settlers who came to the Hudson Valley in the 17th century named this crossing ‘Tappan Zee’ after the local Indian tribe and the Dutch word for sea,” the document says. “Changing the name to reflect our region’s rich history is the right way forward, and changing the name back to Tappan Zee Bridge will do just that.”

But the bill still faces an uncertain future in the Assembly after Transportation Committee chairman William Magnarelli (D-Syracuse) blocked the proposal from receiving a general vote last year.

On Monday, Magnarelli did not immediately comment on the re-introduction of the bill.

Whatever happens to the Albany proposal, people associated with Rockland say “Mario M. Cuomo” will never be the preferred name for the bridge connecting Nyack and Tarrytown.

“Call me original, but for me it will always be Tappan Zee,” Rockland native Sarah Donnelly told The Post.

Despite his apparent snub for one of the Empire State’s most prominent politicians, Skoufis stressed that taking “Mario M. Cuomo” off the bridge is not a personal attack on the late Albany liberal lion.

“Former Governor Mario Cuomo should have a public service dedicated to his service,” he said, “but it should be a naming, not a renaming.”