By David Cruz
Correspondent
Another day, another damning Port Authority revelation. Documents released by the agency this week shed new light on the VIP perks some commissioners and their families were getting on a regular basis at Port Authority airports. You’ve probably heard about the special “chairman’s flight” to South Carolina, half empty most of the time, except for Chairman David Samson and his wife. But Samson got VIP service on a regular basis. On just one flight in June of ’13 the records show the extent of that service.
“…meet Chairman Samson at the gate…”
“…provide escort to the inner roadway…for Chairman Samson’s driver.”
“…Chairman Samson…being escorted to Customs..”
But Samson wasn’t the only one. The records show other commissioners getting perks, too.
Commissioner David Steiner: “Security…assisted the Commissioner with luggage, cleared Customs and walked him to his limo…”
Steiner’s wife, Sylvia, had “Gateway staff standing by… JetBlue permitted early boarding … Mrs. Steiner was met at Gate 16 upon her arrival.”
And Commissioner Virginia Bauer was “met and assisted through the check-in and screening process.”
“I think more importantly what it does point to is the fact that this wasn’t you know, Gov. Christie,” noted Assemblywoman Holly Schepisi. “This wasn’t, you know, [just] bad Republicans.”
Schepisi — a Republican who sits on the committee investigating the GWB lane closures — says the revelations are a pox on both parties’ houses, but, unfortunately, “I don’t think any of this is surprising,” she added. “I think that it just goes to a culture that had been in place for almost decades.”
Which prompted New Jersey legislators to pass — unanimously — a package of Port Authority reform bills, along with the New York legislature, which both governors vetoed during the Christmas holiday. For what it’s worth, Senate Democrats will try to muster the votes necessary next month to override Christie’s veto, but only slim hope survives that that effort will be successful.
“I’ve told my Republican colleagues over and over,” said Senate President Steve Sweeney. “They have to remember that there’s going to be a life after Gov. Christie and — you know — there was a campaign, I remember it. ‘He was for it before he was against it?’ That’s not good for you because you have to justify why you reversed yourself.”
Republican Assemblywoman Amy Handlin didn’t say whether she’d vote for an override. Neither did Schepisi for that matter, but Handlin, who famously noted that the agency spends a million dollars an hour, said she has no love for the Port Authority.
“I shed no tears for the Port Authority,” she said. “Had they demonstrated their awareness of the need to be accountable to the public in years gone by they would not find themselves in this pickle. But they have operated with impunity and that’s become painfully obvious.”
Painfully obvious, maybe, but whether the agency can reform from the inside remains a big question, as does the ability of the legislature to do anything but stand on the sidelines and be righteous in its indignation.