Metro

PA chief blowing bucks on G. Zero

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Hundreds of millions of dollars in “unnecessary spending’’ were authorized by outgoing Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward to accelerate the rebuilding of Ground Zero, an explosive new audit will show.

The audit, ordered by Gov. Cuomo, found Ward engaged in “extravagant overspending” after he was named head of the bi-state agency by then-Gov. David Paterson in May 2008 in an effort to step up the rebuilding in time for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a source close to the Cuomo administration told The Post.

ONE MAN’S FIGHT AGAINST HIGHER TOLLS

“There is no doubt Ward got a lot of the construction going, and that he has a network of people he’s pleased as a result, but at what cost?” the source said.

“But you can’t credit Ward with accelerating the construction without holding him liable for the bill. The economics of this are going to be terrible for New York for decades to come as the bills keep coming in.”

A second source said Ward was “more concerned about what Mayor Bloomberg thought of the reconstruction timetable than he was about the cost to the state he was supposed to be working for.”

Cuomo plans to replace Ward within the next few weeks.

While Cuomo’s deputy secretary for economic development, Patrick Foy, is widely seen as the leading contender, an administration source insisted that others were still under consideration.

The PA audit is expected to be made public within the next few weeks.

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Joining Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is also ruling out holding up passage of a new state budget next April 1 — but for a different reason.

Silver (D-Manhattan) last week told The Post he wouldn’t use the delaying tactic — long a staple of Albany dysfunction — in order to win approval of the “millionaires tax’’ on the wealthy, opposed by Cuomo but favored by liberal Democrats.

Skelos (R-Nassau), responding to growing speculation at the Capitol, told The Post he won’t use the tactic to pressure Cuomo into accepting the Legislature’s version of a legislative redistricting bill designed to keep the Senate in GOP hands.

Skelos spokeswoman Kelly Cummings called the speculation “unequivocally untrue.”

“The Senate is committed to an on-time budget,” continued Cummings, insisting that an on-time budget and redistricting “have nothing to do with each other.”

Cuomo has vowed to veto whatever redistricting bill is agreed to by Skelos and Silver because “it will be a political document” that seeks to protect incumbent Republican and Democratic lawmakers and not draw boundaries that reflect the public interest.

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Talk of Cuomo replacing Vice President Joe Biden on President Obama’s ticket next year, first sparked last spring by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, was spurred again last week by Huffington Post columnist Stewart Lawrence.

After laying out the case for Obama re-energizing his ticket by picking Cuomo, and noting widespread speculation that Cuomo will run for president in 2016, Lawrence wrote, “If Obama’s poll numbers continue to slide, don’t be surprised if he tries to remind the New York governor that the time for change is now.’’

Meanwhile, Republican former US Sen. Al D’Amato is predicting that Cuomo will “absolutely’’ be the leading Democratic presidential contender in 2016.

D’Amato, who has raised money for Cuomo’s gubernatorial campaign, also said it was in Cuomo’s political interest to have Obama lose next year “because with four more years of Obama, people are going to want major change and will be looking to the Republicans for that.”