The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
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Continue reading Pulaski Skyway to Close in Both Directions this Weekend
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Jersey City NJ, the FBI found no evidence of missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa during a search of land under a New Jersey bridge, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
Continue reading FBI Says No Evidence of Jimmy Hoffa Buried Under New Jersey Bridge
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Saddle River NJ, Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead had pizza purists yelling molto bene when the show delivered a reprimand to ignorant Pizza Hut eaters: Never, ever, put pineapple on a pizza.
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Saddle River NJ, The colorful bloom of spring always reminds New Jersey businessman Thomas Giacomaro of his first enchanted meeting with celebrated mystery novelist, Mary Higgins Clark.
Continue reading MARY HIGGINS CLARK: “HE’LL MAKE ME RICH AND FAMOUS!”
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Clifton NJ, the 88-year-old dilapidated Route 3 Bridge will finally be renovated to the tune of $143 million, the Department of Transportation announced last week.
Construction begins in two years…forty years after one of our local celebrities, Thomas “The King of Con” Giacomaro, busted up the guardrails during a mysterious, high-speed chase that made the newspapers.
The businessman tells the tale in his memoir, The King of Con, which is in pre-production for a docuseries to be filmed in North Jersey this year.
Casting for the new King of Con docuseries is underway and filming will begin this summer, so North New Jerseyites will be seeing those fold-up director chairs and movie lights soon.
For all you wanna-be actors, filmmakers need locals to be on camera “to give an authentic NJ ambience,” says one KOC producer, “and fill the diners, streets, and stores with real-life faces of the residents who live here.”
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Newark NJ, the FBI confirmed Friday it searched a former landfill site under the Pulaski Skyway late last month, though a spokesperson for the Detroit field office, which has been leading the decades-long investigation into the disappearance of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, said she couldn’t speak further because the affidavit is sealed.
SEPTEMBER 2, 2015, 9:26 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2015, 11:25 PM
BY SHAWN BOBURG
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
The Port Authority has spent $1.75 million on outside lawyers to shield itself and its employees from an investigation into whether it improperly used toll money from its Hudson River crossings to fix state roads in New Jersey, records show.
The probe by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has attracted much less attention than the federal probe into the George Washington Bridge lane closures, which resulted in the indictments of two former allies of Governor Christie in May. But in an indication of the seriousness and scope of the road-repair funding investigation, the agency has quietly spent more than 2½ times as much on outside legal fees as it did during the lane-closure probe, according to agency data.
Thus far, nothing has come of the investigation into the Port Authority’s decision, at the urging of the Christie administration, to redirect $1.8 billion in toll money to rebuild the Pulaski Skyway and three other New Jersey roads.
JULY 4, 2015, 10:59 PM LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, JULY 4, 2015, 11:25 PM
BY SHAWN BOBURG
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
At the Port Authority, even the lawyers are getting lawyers.
More than 15 officials — including three in-house attorneys — have lawyered up amid an escalating investigation into the Port Authority’s decision to redirect $1.8 billion in toll money from its Hudson River crossings to fix roads in New Jersey.
The development signals that the 15-month-old joint investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has entered a more serious phase. And the focus on at least three of the agency’s top staff attorneys suggests prosecutors and federal regulators are closely examining the legal justification for shifting toll dollars to New Jersey-owned roads.
The investigation is focused on whether the Port Authority misled investors and bondholders in 2011 when it agreed to use toll money to rebuild the 3.5-mile Pulaski Skyway and three other major New Jersey state roads at the behest of the Christie administration. Laws limit the bi-state agency’s spending to projects associated with its own facilities.
The Port Authority quietly justified the spending by labeling the highways as access roads to the agency’s Lincoln Tunnel — even though they are miles from the tunnel, do not connect to it directly and do not generate any revenues for the Port Authority. Agency lawyers described the repairs in bond documents as “access infrastructure improvements” to the Lincoln Tunnel.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/port-authority-road-funds-probe-intensifies-1.1368743
