Port Authority officials: Battle over toll hikes was all for show (New York/New Jersey political corruption)

[mota bhai 2,675]

By Steve Strunsky/The Star-Ledger
on March 02, 2014

On Aug. 5, 2011, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey issued a jaw-dropping proposal to immediately raise bridge and tunnel tolls by $4 for E-ZPass subscribers and $7 for cash customers, followed by another increase in 2014. The proposed hikes amounted to a 75 percent increase for E-ZPass users and 112.5 percent for those paying cash.

The authority also proposed PATH fares go up $1, from $1.75 to $2.75.

The reaction was swift and angry, with commuters and lawmakers blasting the increases.

Gov. Chris Christie, who said he had no advance knowledge of the proposal, was among them.

“You’re kidding, right?” Christie told reporters three days after the announcement, describing what he said when briefed on the proposal.

But within two weeks, after a blizzard of 36 press releases by the Port Authority on behalf of toll hike supporters and after public hearings packed with union laborers backing the plan, Christie and his New York counterpart, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, consented to a more modest increase. Even then, the governors conditioned their approval on a top-to-bottom financial review of the agency.

The thing is, a former Port Authority official told The Star-Ledger, “It was all bullshit.”

From the start, the fix was in, said that former official and five others who occupied key Port Authority posts when the toll hike was rolled out and eventually approved.

The whole process, the authority officials said, was orchestrated from the outset to make the governors look good even as they reached deeper, through the long arm of the authority, into the public’s pockets.

The former Port Authority officials (five who are no longer with the agency and one who is still there) outlined the strategy and execution of the plan in separate interviews with The Star-Ledger. Each asked that their names not be used because they feared repercussions from speaking out even after they had left the agency.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/03/port_authority_officials_battle_over_toll_hikes_was_all_for_show.html

Edited March 3, 2014 by mota bhai