The Port Authority chairman put the agency’s full dysfunction on display Wednesday when he tried to give the bum’s rush to people seeking to be heard about the miserably low pay of airport service workers.
Dozens packed a meeting of the PA’s board only to have New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s top man on the panel, David Samson, attempt to close testimony after only 30 minutes. He reversed course only after Cassandra Dock of Newark vocally called him out.
Samson is up to his ears in at least the attempted coverup of Bridgegate, the plot that closed George Washington Bridge entry lanes in an apparent revenge plot against the mayor of Fort Lee for declining to endorse Christie’s reelection.
At least one Samson colleague in the Port’s Christie gang, David Wildstein, concocted the bridge traffic nightmare. Meanwhile, Samson is also enmeshed in a maneuver whereby he backed a project that benefited a law client while publicly stating that he had recused himself.
His high-handed treatment of the airport workers was perfectly in keeping with the PA’s arrogance and highlighted that the bistate behemoth is now, in effect, two agencies: one run by Gov. Cuomo’s picks, the other run by Christie’s people.
Cuomo and Executive Director Pat Foye are pushing the airlines at JFK and LaGuardia to immediately raise the pay scale of thousands of workers by $1 above the $8 minimum wage, as a step toward $10.10 an hour. Delta has agreed but United, JetBlue and America are balking.
Worse still, Christie has left airport workers out to dry, with his appointees bomfogging about difficult legal and policy considerations. Dock zeroed in trenchantly when she asked the board, “Won’t you trade places with these people, Mr. Samson? Why don’t you, like the ‘Undercover Boss’ — you’ve ever seen that show before — go trade places with them?”
While the workers were testifying, Commissioner Ray Pocino, a top New Jersey labor leader, who was put on the board by Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey, said: “The commissioners had an extensive discussion today and will continue to work toward adopting a comparable policy on this issue for all workers of all airports of this authority. We view this agency and its facilities and its workers as one authority.”
Not by a long shot. Not when Cuomo has taken the job of renovating JFK and LaGuardia away from the PA. Not when Foye answers simply, “politics,” when asked what Wildstein’s job had been at the Port. Not when Jersey pols see the agency as one big pile of patronage and funding.
And not as long as the authority board is willing to sanction paying poverty wages to thousands of workers in one state and not the other, and does not stand unified against the minimum wage exploitation of all the people who keep the airports clean and running.