Removing secrecy from Port Authority

Kelly: Removing secrecy from Port Authority

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2014    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23, 2014, 9:57 AM
By MIKE KELLY
RECORD COLUMNIST

Mike Kelly is a Record columnist. Contact him at kellym@northjersey.com.

THE Port Authority is obsessed with numbers. It counts cars and trucks at its bridges and tunnels, riders on its PATH trains – even gallons of paint needed to cover every girder and cable on the George Washington Bridge.

But here is a number that the bi-state agency ought to be deeply worried about: 16.

That is the number of comments from the general public on the Port Authority’s plan to spend almost $28 billion over the next decade to upgrade its bridges, tunnels, airports and the PATH system. Those 16 comments came from nine people. An additional 20 comments were discovered by the Port Authority in various social media sites. It’s not clear how many people actually made those 20 comments.

Change needed

But one message is incredibly clear. The Port Authority goes about life in what seems to be a separate, unmonitored universe from the rest of life in the New York and New Jersey region. If the agency ever plans to reform itself, that needs to change.

The Port Authority’s aloofness is not a new story. But the issue has gained renewed traction recently because of the lane closure controversy at the George Washington Bridge that not only threatens to undermine Governor Christie’s second term but any possibility that he could emerge as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016.

At the heart of that controversy is a question of abuse of power by Christie’s aides and allies who allegedly orchestrated massive traffic jams in Fort Lee during four days last September as a way of punishing the borough’s Democratic mayor for his reluctance to endorse Christie’s reelection.

One of those allies, David Wildstein, was a high-ranking Port Authority executive, appointed by Christie. Without any oversight or even a hint of approval from anyone else in the Port Authority, Wildstein ordered the three access lanes from Fort Lee to the bridge reduced to one.

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