At a press conference Monday in a building overlooking Times Square, Charles Schumer ripped into the Port Authority and announced legislation to fix it.
“The Port Authority,” he said, “has come to be seen as the proverbial honey pot, a cookie jar, a rainy day fund…for projects outside the Port’s core mission.”
Amen to that. As if to underscore Schumer’s words, taxpayers have just learned of a new boondoggle involving architect Salvatore Calatrava — whose $4 billion PATH hub at the World Trade Center has become the poster boy for wasteful cost overruns and inefficiency.
The Record reports Calatrava was also paid $500,000 by the Port Authority for two bridge designs the agency never requested and later rejected, and to which it no longer has any legal claims. In other words, the PA paid a half-million dollars simply to look at plans it never asked for, didn’t want and couldn’t use.
Schumer is right to focus on the PA’s core mission, because its forays into areas outside that mission — notably downtown real estate — account for much of its growing debt. Getting out won’t be easy, but the first place to start is by nixing the proposal for the PA to guarantee a $1.2 billion loan for 3 World Trade Center.
As for Sen. Schumer, while he understands the problem we’re less sure of his federal prescription. The answer to most of the PA’s problem is to narrow the mission and be more honest about the costs of projects as well as the risks for taxpayers.
And if New York and New Jersey can’t do that without the federal government, we’re in worse shape than anyone thought.