A rare psychiatric disorder causes mothers to make their kids sick — so that the moms can claim “credit” for taking care of sick kids. That’s what Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is doing now with the Port Authority. Suddenly, Christie wants to “reform” the bi-state transportation agency — ignoring the fact that he caused its latest crisis.
Two weeks ago, at a Bridgegate press conference, the governor hit upon his solution: Break up the Port Authority along state lines.
“The best way, perhaps, to deal with this” is “taking the Hatfields and the McCoys and moving them into separate homes, because they haven’t been able to get along . . . despite my best efforts” and “the best efforts of Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo,” he said.
Ah, no: Bridgegate happened because people in New Jersey couldn’t get along. Cuomo appointee Pat Foye had to act as the adult slapping down Christie’s trusted circle.
The people whom Christie appointed to oversee the PA were selfish, spiteful hacks who knew only enough about transportation to use it as part of an alleged vengeance plot.
But that’s traffic under the bridge. Let’s accept that the Port Authority’s biggest problem is two warring states. How would you break it up?
You can’t — at least, not without fixing a lot of other problems, like Jersey’s well-deserved poor credit rating.
The problem lies in the Port Authority’s financial structure. Two of the airports that the PA runs make huge profits — $170 million at JFK last year and $177 million at Newark. (La Guardia makes a small profit, too.) The PA Hudson River crossings make big profits, too — $771 million.
These profits cover losses for Jersey’s mass-transit commuters — the PATH train system, which loses $321 million annually, and the Midtown Manhattan bus terminal, which loses $111 million.
The profits also cover losses at $2.1 billion worth of “regional programs” built up over 30 years. These projects, carefully divided between both states, are pork-barrel stuff that the PA never should have done, because it has nothing to do with regional transportation. The projects bleed $113 million annually.
Then there’s the World Trade Center — whose $7.5 billion in debt (so far) should cost the Port Authority an extra $200 million or so a year, except that the authority structured some bonds so that it doesn’t have to start paying them off for a long time.
The problem with splitting up profits and losses by state — with New Jersey taking over the $4 billion PATH terminal downtown — is that bondholders would then have to assess the capacity of each state to pay for its own losses, rather than the bi-state entity as a whole.
But New Jersey has a lower credit rating than New York — and, unlike New York, it has tens of billions of dollars in unfunded pension obligations.
So what would work?
Cuomo has said he wants to see some sort of “reform” — but he’s particularly interested in New York’s airports. It makes some sense to allow the airports to keep their profits, and use them to invest in, well, airports (and transportation to airports).
If Cuomo wants to do that, though, both he and Christie would have to say where they would come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize PATH, existing losses from pork-barrel projects and the massive World Trade Center debts.
In the meantime, they could both do something easy: Stop hurting the Port Authority.
Both governors should say that the authority should stop investing in new pork-barrel projects, something that goes beyond its mission.
In the long term, they should sell the projects off, likely at huge losses. But it’s hard to do that when Christie still wants the PA to pour cash down the drain for things like like running the Atlantic City airport. Cuomo, too, is happy to sign off on another billion dollars’ worth of new regional projects split between the two states over the next decade.
No more subsidies for the World Trade Center, either. If there is a social goal in rebuilding real estate lost on 9/11, New York should pay, not force it onto an already distressed transportation authority.
The PA could attack its bloated payroll, too. It makes no sense to have higher-paid PA cops patrol the World Trade Center or the Port Authority Bus Terminal, both in Manhattan (where we have police).
Here’s a start: On 2012, the Bergen Record identified 39 people whom Christie had placed at the Port Authority upon becoming governor. The 28 who still worked there for at least part of last year consumed nearly $3 million in wages, according to calculations based on data the Empire Center think tank will release soon.
This hackery has nothing to do with two states not getting along — and everything to do with one governor’s inability to run a clean, or even dirty-but-competent, shop.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.