Christie Administration Now Probed on Port Authority Funding of Pulaski Skyway Rehab

Media outlets continue reporting that Gov. Chris Christie and his administration is being investigated for how the Port Authority funded the Pulaski Skyway rehabilitation project.

New Jersey got the Port Authority to shift funds originally meant for the ARC tunnel to go to rebuild the Pulaski Skyway. That happened when Gov. Christie cancelled the ARC project in 2010, and it's a decision I agreed with because NJ Transit could never keep to a capital budget and New York was not contributing to a project that would benefit immensely from the added tunnels, as well as the fact that the project design was flawed with no through-running trains to Sunnyside Yards for maximizing train access into Manhattan during the morning rush hour and additional trains for the PM rush back to New Jersey.

The Pulaski Skyway was one of the first superhighways designed and opened in 1932. It connected Newark to Jersey City across the Hackensack River and Meadowlands, along with providing direct access to the Holland Tunnel. The bridge was determined to need massive rehabilitation, particularly after the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota a few years back.

The rehabilitation project is indeed a worthy and needed project, but New Jersey didn’t want to raise its own taxes or fees to cover it. That would have put Gov. Christie in a tough position had he wanted to run for President. So, it appears that Gov. Christie and his appointees at the Port Authority got the Port Authority to issue a ruling that the Skyway was an access road to the Lincoln Tunnel, which would be a valid use of Port Authority funds. But the reality is that it’s a stretch to call it a Lincoln Tunnel access road since it directly leads to the Holland.

This has consequences for the bond offerings by the Port Authority since it would be a material misrepresentation of what the bond offerings were for.

Now, a complicating factor is that the Port Authority doesn’t answer to Christie alone. It’s a bistate agency and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would ordinarily need to sign off on the deal through his representatives on the Board.

Bridgegate showed how the system inside the Port Authority has completely broken down and how New York's appointees on the authority were outside the loop for the GWB lane closures. Is it possible they’re outside the loop on the Skyway funding deal?

I consider that possible but highly implausible because all the major news outlets reported on how Port Authority funds were going to be reallocated to do the Pulaski project. That would seemingly implicate Cuomo as well. These issues should have been raised back then and there were questions about how the money was reallocated, though no one appeared to have raised the question about whether the reallocation was legal from a securities offering perspective.

How wouldn’t it implicate Cuomo? If the New Jersey cronies were the ones who ginned up the legal authority to shift the funds, ignoring other counsel, then the prosecutors might be able to isolate the culpability for the deal to Christie and his allies inside the Port Authority.

Frankly, the way Gov. Cuomo has screwed with regional transit and played games with MTA funding, I wouldn't be shocked if both were involved in these actions and that there was a quid pro quo for the Port Authority to spend a similar amount of funds on New York based projects.

Gov. Christie's Political Problems Just Grew To GWB Traffic Jam Sized Proportions

After months of denying that he or his staff had anything to do with the George Washington Bridge lane closures that caused massive traffic jams in Fort Lee and caused a public safety mess for the city or that the lane closures were politically motivated, new emails and text messages that were sought by The Record reveal that there were, in fact, political motivations involved.

The messages are replete with references and insults to Fort Lee’s mayor, who had failed to endorse Christie for re-election and they chronicle how they tried to reach Port Authority officials in a vain effort to eliminate the paralyzing gridlock that overwhelmed his town of 35,000 which sits in the shadow of the bridge, the world’s busiest.

The documents obtained by The Record raise serious doubts about months of claims by the Christie administration that the September closures of local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were part of a traffic study initiated solely by the Port Authority. Instead, they show that one of the governor’s top aides was deeply involved in the decision to choke off the borough’s access to the bridge, and they provide the strongest indication yet that it was part of a politically-motivated vendetta—a notion that Christie has publicly denied.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Bridget Anne Kelly, one of three deputies on Christie’s senior staff, wrote to David Wildstein, a top Christie executive at the Port Authority, on Aug. 13, about three weeks before the closures. Wildstein, the official who ordered the closures and who resigned last month amid the escalating scandal, wrote back: “Got it.”

Other top Christie associates mentioned in or copied on the email chain, all after the top New York appointee at the authority ordered the lanes reopened, include David Samson, the chairman of the agency; Bill Stepien, Christie’s re-election campaign manager and the newly appointed state GOP chairman; and Michael Drewniak, Christie’s spokesman.

Christie has previously said that no one in his staff or campaign was involved in the lane closings, and he has dismissed questions about political retribution by joking that he moved the traffic cones himself.

While Gov. Christie's pal David Wildstein has already been sacked and Bob Baroni, who was Christie's top pick at the Port Authority resigned, the emails reveal that the traffic mess was initiated by those in Christie's inner circle.

This shows just how petty that Christie's staffers were in a race that was never going to be all that close.

Not only do the Governor's political appointees at the Port Authority need to be scrutinized for their actions, but the state needs to hold Gov. Christie accountable for this act of partisan hackery that undermined public safety in Fort Lee - all because the mayor wasn't going to endorse the Governor across party lines.

The governor not only needs to apologize to Fort Lee residents, but he needs to clean house of his staffers who went down this path.

I'm sure that local politicians are looking at whether criminal charges could be filed in relation to interfering with public safety by engaging in a political vendetta against the mayor.

It's possibly actionable under the state's Code of Criminal Justice. Various charges could include violating the Execution of Public Duty under 2C:3-3, Crime of corruption of public resources under 2C:27-12, and Obstructing Highways and Other Public Passages under 2C:33-7.

As with the NJ Transit rail fleet flooding debacle, Gov. Christie has let those involved get off easy. That has stop. He has to hold those involved accountable, and he has to take responsibility himself for these actions. Every day that he lets these staffers stay on in Trenton is another day that this scandal grows.

And I'm saying this as someone who voted for Christie. He personally did well in the Sandy aftermath excluding the NJ Transit rail fleet flooding flap, but this action has parallels to the NJ Transit mess. He's let his underlings/staffers get off without so much as a slap on the wrist for engaging in actions that put state assets at risk (in the NJT instance) and lives at risk (in GWB lane closures).

He's got to fire those involved and allow the AG or federal prosecutors to investigate this fully. You can't engage in a political vendetta like this, where lives can be put at risk - and Fort Lee documented how police, fire and EMS were unable to respond quickly due to the traffic jams that blocked most of the city as a result of the lane closures to the bridge.

Cross posted at LGF.

Heads Roll at Port Authority Over GWB Traffic Jam

The Port Authority is a bistate agency that handles interstate transit projects between New York and New Jersey. Its top officials are nominated by the governors of New York and New Jersey. Back in September, David Wildstein headed up a supposed traffic study that limited local traffic from entering the George Washington Bridge to a single toll lane. That compared to three toll lanes previously.

The "study" lasted several days, before it was put to an end. The fallout from the traffic jam that left Fort Lee's downtown paralyzed for hours each day and threatened public safety to the point that fire engines, police cars, and ambulances were stuck with no way to get to their destinations. There was no good response from the Port Authority as it stonewalled at every opportunity. It then took the state legislature to subpoena officials to begin to get to the bottom of the story.

Those involved in setting this up instructed anyone involved not to tell anyone outside the agency, because it would have serious fallout. They were right, of course, but not in the way they thought.

The fallout from the study continues today, with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey firing Bill Baroni, the Executive Director of the Port Authority. Christie's trying to frame this as a routine move, even as acknowledging that the traffic moves were improperly done and that one thing has nothing to do with the other:

Christie’s appointees say the lane closures were part of a traffic study, but they have admitted they did not follow normal protocol for conducting such a study.

The Republican governor today agreed that the lane closures – which jammed the town’s traffic for hours each morning -- were not conducted properly.

“When mistakes are made, people have to be held accountable for them,” said Christie.

Critics have suggested the lane closures were a political move by Christie’s appointees after the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee chose not to endorse Christie during the gubernatorial election.

Christie dismissed those allegations as “a whole lot of hullabaloo” and insisted that Baroni’s resignation is not a result of the controversy. He said Baroni, who has worked at the Port Authority for four years, was already planning to resign.

“Four years at the Port Authority as [deputy executive director] is enough for anybody,” Christie said. The governor said he has not directly spoken with Baroni recently.

Baroni, a former state senator, did not attend the news conference, and he did not respond to a request for comment.

In his place, Christie is appointing Deb Gramiccioni, his deputy chief of staff for policy and planning. Gramiccioni has a reputation for stamping out wasteful government spending and going after public corruption.

It certainly appears that the decision was politically motivated to go after Fort Lee. The hearings so far have indicated that there was no plan for how to address the closure, no warning to commuters, and that the effect of the study could have been done with a computer simulation, avoiding the problem altogether.

No one specifically said it was politically motivated, but the reading between the lines is highly suggestive.

The alternative is that there was gross incompetence.

That Christie canned Baroni today, and accepted the resignation of David Wildstein effective end of the year, also shows that this was politically motivated. Christie's trying to limit the political fallout.

The Port Authority is a den of political appointees by design - NY and NJ both designate appointees, so people who are politically connected are chosen for top spots - and the positions are essentially evenly split between NY and NJ appointees.

The surprising thing is that Christie canned Baroni today, but had no problem keeping on NJ Transit's James Weinstein, whose rail team put the rail fleet in a position to be flooded out during Sandy costing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, reduced the rail schedule for months, and no one was fired - there was one person who was demoted, but that was a minor underling.

By his own logic, he should have held Weinstein accountable for the NJ Transit rail debacle. But he hasn't and wont.

Bridge Repairs To Cause Massive Headaches For NY Drivers

The Alexander Hamilton bridge, which spans the Harlem River and is a huge bottleneck for anyone who takes the George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York, is currently undergoing a huge reconstruction and rehabilitation project. New lanes are being added, and traffic diversions are a regularly occurring feature.

Now, those construction headaches are being taken to another level as the upcoming phase of construction will further limit the number of lanes available.

Getting across the world’s busiest bridge is rarely easy during rush hour, but traffic engineers estimate that backups on eastbound Route 95 could extend to Route 80 in Hackensack — nearly five miles from the bridge — and down the New Jersey Turnpike, a New York Department of Transportation spokesman said Tuesday. Traffic heading back to New Jersey from New York will not be affected.

Significant and consistent delays on North Jersey’s busiest traffic arteries could also mean spillover into side streets, as commuters look for alternative routes, experts said.

A Port Authority spokesman said the agency was not aware of a past road repair project that caused such a sustained and severe impact on traffic flow at the bridge, crossed easterly by 140,000 vehicles per day. But because the project is in New York, the delays are sure to take some New Jersey commuters by surprise on Monday morning.

“I wasn’t even aware that there was a project, but you can bet that until it’s done, I’ll be taking the train,” Kris Baker, 47, of Teaneck said after learning about the construction on Tuesday. He said he usually drives to his job at a bank in Manhattan.

The expected backups are due to a $409 million rehabilitation of the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, a nearly 50-year-old arch span that carries Route 95 traffic over the Harlem River, between Manhattan and the Bronx. The mostly federally funded project, the largest the New York State Department of Transportation has ever undertaken, will extend the bridge’s life another 75 years. Work is under way, but the fourth of six phases will involve resurfacing the bridge. As a result, the middle section of the eastbound highway will be closed, with traffic diverted to new lanes that curve around it on both sides.

Officials say once completed about two years from now, the same New Jersey roads that will be clogged over the next several months will see fewer delays because of the span’s repaved surface and additional breakdown lane.

Transportation officials are expecting that New York bound drivers could face delays of miles during the rush hour. They figure that traffic will back up more than 5 miles into Hackensack and the I80/I95 split.

This is what happens when you try to get 7 lanes of inbound traffic down to four restricted lanes. It also means that traffic from the upper level will have an even tougher time trying to cross traffic to get to the Major Deegan (I87/I287).

Still, the project is absolutely critical since it would extend the life of the bridge by another 75 years, plus it adds a breakdown lane - eliminating traffic bottlenecks that were an all too normal occurrence when there were accidents or breakdowns before construction began.

The only real alternatives for trucks is to either go up to the Tappan Zee bridge or to sit in traffic.

Commuters ought to seriously consider mass transit to avoid the headaches, but those who cannot commute by mass transit or who are driving across the span will have massive delays to contend with. Localities on both sides of the bridge will find major traffic problems as drivers clog up local streets.

And the problems will get worse once the Port Authority begins its reconstruction project on the Lincoln Tunnel helix.

Port Authority Announces Major Renovations For George Washington Bridge Approaches

The Port Authority had previously announced its intention to replace all of the George Washington Bridge's stringers (the vertical suspenders that attach the roadway decks to the suspension cables) as part of its 5-year capital plan. Today, it has announced several projects that also affect the bridge and the hundreds of thousands of people who use the bridge on a daily basis.

For starters, the $1 billion stringer replacement project is getting $20 million for planning. However, that's the warmup for a host of other projects affecting the span and its approaches.

The agency’s Board of Commissioners has taken action to facilitate the intensive bridge rehabilitation program. The Board’s actions included a project to rehabilitate the 178th and 179th Street and bus ramps, planning work for the rehabilitation of the Center Avenue and Lemoine Avenue bridges, and planning for rehabilitation work on the bridge’s lower level. The investments approved today cost an estimated $230 million; ultimately, the three projects are estimated to cost between $460 and $480 million.

In addition to these projects, the Board authorized a $20 million planning project in December 2011 to replace the George Washington Bridge’s steel suspender ropes. That project is anticipated to cost between $1 and $1.2 billion and is projected to generate nearly 4,000 jobs and more than one billion in economic activity.

“The George Washington Bridge is the busiest crossing in the world and represents the most critical connector of commerce in the Northeast region,” said Port Authority Chairman David Samson. “Maintaining this iconic structure goes to the heart of the Port Authority’s mission, both as an engine of economic growth and as a provider of the region’s most important infrastructure.”

“These projects are core to the mission of the Port Authority of building and maintaining transportation infrastructure that will ensure the efficient, safe movement of people and goods in the New York New Jersey region,” said Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye. “These are important assets to the Port Authority, and as stewards of the public’s infrastructure we must maintain and preserve them for future generations.”

Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni said, “Every day, more than 300,000 people use this bridge to get to work, to shop or to visit friends on both sides of the Hudson. In 2010 alone, the bridge handled some 102 million vehicles on its two levels, toll plazas and toll lanes. It is critical therefore that we invest in this program to ensure this vital asset for the region continues to serve the region for years to come.”

Recent engineering studies have indicated that the 178th and 179th Street ramps, two associated bus ramps and the bus connector ramp structure that links these elevated areas must be rehabilitated. The street ramps were built in 1931 and last underwent a comprehensive rehaliltation more than 20 years ago. The bus ramps and associated connector ramp were built in 1958 and last had work on them in the late 1980s. The work on these ramps is projected to cost $218.8 million and is estimated to create 1,013 jobs, $72 million in wages, and $334 in economic activity.

The 178th and 179th Street ramps and the associated bus ramps are located on the Manhattan side of the bridge, while the Center Avenue and Lemoine Avenue overpasses are on the New Jersey side.


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The bridge will also undergo lead abatement and repainting on the lower level and other structural and functional repairs.

Yet, the Port Authority is not going to tackle the issue of lengthy delays caused by backups due to insufficient numbers of cash lanes that thwart users of EZ Pass from getting through in a more timely and efficient manner (to say nothing of the pollution due to the idling of hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks on a daily basis).

One consideration might be to make the Lower Level accessible only to vehicles with EZ Pass, rather than trying to back up traffic unnecessarily. It's a low-cost alternative to other efforts, and the benefits outweigh the potential costs. Traffic would flow more smoothly, though cash-customers might complain about being stuck in the same traffic flow as the trucks. Of course, the response to those customers should be to get EZ-Pass to avoid having those kinds of delays. Reducing the congestion would increase economic activity throughout the region.