Does Gov. Hochul, a Buffalo Native, Really Get New York City?

In Syracuse, she has overseen an ambitious $180 million project to remove a blighted viaduct and promised billions in financial support for a computer chip factory near the city. She gave Rochester, which has been a focus of an anti-poverty program, $100 million to help reconnect its downtown to surrounding neighborhoods.

And in Buffalo, her hometown, Gov. Kathy Hochul gave the football team, the Buffalo Bills, a new stadium with the help of hundreds of millions of dollars in state money, in what is expected to be the highest public outlay for a pro football stadium.

In her nearly three years as governor, Ms. Hochul has seemed comfortable displaying her upstate bona fides. Her relationship with New York City is not as deeply established nor, critics say, as politically fine-tuned, a dynamic on display on Wednesday when the governor announced a last-minute decision to indefinitely delay the implementation of the congestion pricing tolling plan in Manhattan.

It was a stunning turnabout, a whiplash moment that may appease commuters outside Manhattan who were upset at the prospect of yet another fee in an already expensive city that is still recovering from its pandemic-related economic swoon.

But the decision also infuriated many policy shapers and lawmakers, who said the governor had simply turned her back on some of the city’s most critical needs: funding the subway, reducing traffic and improving air quality.

Among the disenchanted were even people who disliked the idea of paying the congestion pricing fee to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street.