Public authorities were created by political reformers in hopes of walling off vital services from political pressures. Unfortunately, that has also walled them off from public accountability, turning too many of these authorities into semi-secret, autonomous branches of government.
That’s especially true with the mother of all such agencies, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
We had a fresh lesson this week, when The Record reported that in 1986 the Port Authority signed away all rights to the name “World Trade Center” — the center it built and owns — to a top agency official. The price for this lucrative asset? $10.
The official was Guy Tozzoli, who set up a nonprofit that for decades has aggressively marketed the World Trade Center name. The nonprofit brought in millions and paid Tozzoli upwards of $500,000 a year after his retirement. That was on top of Tozzoli’s six-figure Port Authority pension, mind you.
Under the terms of the deal, even the Port Authority has had to pay for using the World Trade Center name.
Port Authority officials say they have no record of the deal ever being approved, and the executive director at the time, Stephen Berger, says this is the first he’s heard of it. But Berger says that Tozzoli, who died last January, may have legitimately arranged the deal without telling anyone, because “directors of departments have authority to do certain types of transactions.”
Maybe the deal passed legal muster, but it doesn’t pass the smell test. As a spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pointed out, a similar deal today would likely draw the attention of a federal prosecutor. Meanwhile, the Port Authority’s current executive director wants a review of the contract with an eye toward voiding it.
The problem here lies in the nature of all such public authorities: They operate in what a New York assemblyman once described as a “a culture of arrogance,” because they need not follow the same rules as everyone else. At this late date, state officials in either New York and New Jersey probably can’t do much to reverse this bad deal — but there’s still plenty worth doing to change the culture that led to it.