The Port Authority needs major reforms to make it transparent and boost its finances, Sen. Charles Schumer said Monday.
He called on the bi-state agency to have more open meetings, share a detailed operating budget every year and release long-term financial plans to the public for review and comments.
“The only you time you hear from the Port Authority is when they have announced that they have already decided on this or that project,” he said.
Schumer (D-NY) also said the power to choose the PA’s leadership should come from its board of 12 commissioners from New York and New Jersey, rather than from the governors picking the executive and deputy directors.
“It would begin to wind down and end the practice of having two lines of authority in an agency that only needs one,” he said.
Another reform would have the PA focus only on projects that move people and goods through ports, such as the renovation of La Guardia Airport — and not on pet projects unrelated to its mission.
Mayor Bill de Blasio also said Monday that there should be change at the agency, even if he hasn’t endorsed specific ideas. “I think we have to do a lot better in terms of the Port Authority,” he said.
Scrutiny of the agency has heightened since Gov. Chris Christie’s staff and appointees deliberately created traffic jams in Fort Lee by closing lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge in September 2013.
Three high-ranking agency officials have since quit.