Gov. Hochul was wrong to veto an important Port Authority reform bill even as she was right to appoint the excellent Kathryn Garcia to be the next PA executive director when incumbent Rick Cotton departs next month after doing an outstanding job since 2017.
The Port reform legislation was passed unanimously in both the state Senate and the Assembly and Hochul killed it last week. She did the same veto last December, also when the bill passed with every Democrat and every Republican in the Legislature in favor of it.
The legislation is a series of good government and transparency improvements that stemmed from the 2013 Bridgegate fiasco, when then-Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s goons at the Port closed lanes to the George Washington Bridge, the world’s busiest, to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie’s reelection. You remember, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” as emailed one conspirator to another.
The bill would put into law practices that Cotton has implemented, because there won’t always be honorable people at the agency, as we saw in Bridgegate. If Hochul has specific changes she wants, work with the Legislature to iron them out and then go to New Jersey for them to adopt the same legislation. Soon-to-be Gov. Mikie Sherrill believes in openness and accountability and she’ll make for a good partner with Hochul to guarantee that the PA never goes rogue again.
Sherrill should also be able to select her own choice of PA chair, the traditional role of the Jersey governor (New York gets the executive director). Due to a deal that Christie made in 2017 with the state Senate in Trenton, Christie’s pick for chair, Kevin O’Toole, a former GOP county chairman and state senator, has been there ever since. His six-year term expired 2½ years ago, so he’s been a holdover. It also means that Phil Murphy, despite being the governor for eight years, never got to name a chairman. Blame dirty politics in Trenton.
There is no need to revive the empty post of deputy executive editor, the DED, where the Jersey governor had a counterpart to the executive editor. Leave the DED as dead.
The PA is a huge public agency, spending about $10 billion a year with six commissioners appointed by the New York governor and six by the Jersey governor. It runs the airports, the docks, the PATH train, the World Trade Center and the world’s biggest and yuckiest bus terminal.
But its founding mission, to build a rail freight tunnel under the Hudson from Jersey to Brooklyn, has been lost. That is much more critical to the region’s economy than any new passenger rail tunnel, yet the PA has dawdled for decades. Rail is much cheaper, more efficient and far less polluting than trucks rumbling over the GWB. Rep. Jerry Nadler has always been correct for the freight rail tunnel’s need.
If Garcia, who we backed for mayor four years ago, could get that rail freight tunnel going she would be a miracle worker. Something much more achievable for her is to finally have a direct, one-seat ride from JFK Airport to Midtown, via the LIRR tracks into both Penn Station and Grand Central. She should also work with the MTA to extend the N train to LaGuardia, which the MTA can and should do. And get a one-seat ride for Newark Airport also.
And here’s an easy one for Garcia: Get rid of the defunct toll booths and toll plazas at the Lincoln Tunnel and GWB.
