Open up your checkbooks, outer-borough commuters; has Mayor Bloomberg got a doozy for you.

Last week, Bloomberg outlined his grand vision for the green future of New York City: PlaNYC is a bold vision to make the city a more eco-friendly place by 2030. Bloomberg has proposed planting a million new trees, increasing spending on mass transit options and a host of other environmental initiatives designed to make today’s environmentally conscious citizen swoon. In his speech, Bloomberg said it was important to deal with such problems today, rather than when it is too late to potentially reverse the city’s environmental impact.

But one portion of Bloomberg’s plan has many city residents up in arms. The mayor has proposed a congestion pricing scheme, modeled after a similar plan enacted in London, that would have drivers pay $8 each weekday they enter Manhattan below 86th Street during peak commuting hours. The plan would ostensibly cut down on traffic and reduce emissions in the city, but it would also hit commuters in their pockets—and that has the outer boroughs furious.

The Queens Chamber of Commerce has taken the lead in fighting the congestion-charging proposal. In February 2006, the chamber released a report outlining the economic impact a congestion-pricing plan would have on small business, estimating that the economic loss within the city would be 10 times more than the revenue gained from the proposal.

Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit group supporting the congestion charge, has blasted the study as biased and lacking any real merit. “The Queens Chamber of Commerce study—and that is using the word ‘study’ very loosely—is nine ways wrong in asserting that the costs of congestion pricing outweigh the environmental, transit and health benefits,” said Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White.

Kathlyn Moran, director of business outreach for the Queens Chamber of Commerce, said she was not surprised that Transportation Alternatives would question the study. They did so when it was first released, questioning the credentials of Appleseed, the firm that put it together. Moran said that the chamber is “very confident” in Appleseed’s work, pointing out that the company actually expected to prove that congestion pricing would be a good thing. They failed, said Moran.

A newer study is on the way, she adds. And already the chamber has begun a massive protest of the proposal. Elected officials, including Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and Congressman Anthony Weiner, the frontrunner to replace Bloomberg in 2009, have also come out against the proposal, as have several outer borough city council members. The message is clear: Lower Manhattan residents might just love the idea of less traffic, but they don’t have to pay for it. The proposal is a tax on people with jobs, on small business, on the working class. One Queens businessman estimated that the new charge could cost him more than $27,000 the first year.

“Congestion pricing is a regressive tax that harms small businesses and middle-class residents who need to travel into Manhattan to work or conduct business,” said Queens Chamber of Commerce President Raymond Irrera. “The plan, as proposed, would entail forcing people with little or no access to public transportation onto a mass transit system that is already at capacity and would add significant costs to the price of doing business in New York City.”

Supporters of the congestion charge insist that this is the only way to bring improved mass transit options to the five boroughs. “Congestion pricing in New York would do what it has done for London and Stockholm: reduce traffic congestion, fund badly-needed transit improvements, result in cleaner air and improve public health. Opponents have to answer a tough question: what’s their program to lower congestion and pay for billions in transit improvements for New York?” said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. But some evidence suggests that the money to be generated from the congestion charge only pays to maintain the congestion charge, and not for any of the proposed improvements.

In the past, Bloomberg said that congestion pricing would not be on his second- term agenda, but has since changed his mind, citing congestion concerns. The real opposition to the plan was likely more political. Had Bloomberg told the city two years ago that he wanted to tax their driving habits, his opponents could have run all the way to the goal line with their opposition. The outer boroughs decide the winner in mayoral elections, and given the backlash to this proposal, Bloomberg might have been a loser in 2005 had he presented congestion pricing to the public.

Bloomberg doesn’t have to worry. But for those who don’t live on the island, prepare to pay through the nose—because you can’t, of course, afford Manhattan rent.