(Kevin P. Coughlin)
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie yesterday blasted the Port Authority over its push to raise tolls $4 and blamed a bevy of former and current politicians — including Mayor Bloomberg — for letting the bistate agency run wild with its spending.
Christie said he was shocked to learn of the massive proposed toll hike on Hudson River and Staten Island crossings from $8 to $12 for drivers with E-ZPass, recalling his first reaction: “You’re kidding, right?”
Once he stopped reeling from shock, he said he got angry — citing the toll hikes as “testimony to the mismanagement of the Port for years” and laying the blame squarely on bistate leadership over the past decade for overspending on Ground Zero.
“I wish that people would have been more attentive in the last administration to demanding and holding the Port Authority to a budget on lower Manhattan,” Christie told reporters yesterday.
“But they weren’t. Gov. [Jon] Corzine was not. Gov. [David] Paterson apparently was not. And Mayor Bloomberg, to the extent that he had input on it as well, was not.”
Bloomberg has been outspoken in demanding that the agency pick up some of the security costs for the new World Trade Center, and he pressed it to make a deal with Larry Silverstein to allow him to move forward with his office towers.
“We’ve committed a dedicated force of up to 600 NYPD personnel at the city’s expense, but the Port needs to spend on security, too,” said Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser. “There’s no way the Condé Nasts of the world will move there without this.”
Christie saved his harshest criticism for PA Executive Director Christopher Ward, a Paterson appointee. “Chris Ward’s been running the Port Authority and so these decisions on budgeting and what’s been spent and what’s been wasted have been under Mr. Ward’s purview,” he said.
Christie said PA Chairman David Samson — whom he appointed — has been getting the agency’s fiscal house in order.
“Now we have General Samson there,” Christie said of the former New Jersey attorney general. “He has been controlling things at a much better rate than has done before.”
The PA on Friday announced it was on the verge of enacting a double helping of toll and fare hikes, the first of which would take effect next month. The second round, a $2 hike, is planned for 2014.
Christie and Gov. Cuomo, who jointly control the agency, have the power to veto any toll hike. Christie would not say yesterday what he plans to do, but added of himself and Cuomo: “Neither one of us have signed off on or approved what was proposed.”