Former Gov. David Paterson today lambasted New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for saying he had no idea in advance that the Port Authority was going to seek significant toll hikes.
Our Ken Lovett reports:
“When I was governor,
(Port Authority Executive Director Chris) Ward
and I met very frequently and he let me know how serious the deficit was,” Paterson told WOR-AM’s John Gambling this morning.
“I cannot believe he just let me know because I was the New York governor who appointed him and that he didn’t let the New Jersey side know… For anybody to say this is a big secret and that they’re shocked…”
Paterson gave his successor, Gov. Cuomo, a pass. He deemed as “believable” Camp Cuomo’s statements that they didn’t know the solutions were going to be as severe and that he would have liked to have known earlier.
“I think that is legitimate,” Paterson said. “But to act like you were there for all this time and you didn’t know because nobody told you? Here’s a good way to solve that: Why didn’t you ask?”
Paterson said it was wrong to blame previous administrations, likening the situation to Washington, D.C.
“Blaming everybody there prior to the [current] administration — that’s been tried before,” he said. “As the [Obama] administration is finding out, once you’re there a year, once you’re there a year-and-a-half, it’s all yours.”
“Why didn’t you say in your campaign ads, ‘Listen: Elect me and in two years, I’ll start telling you what I think I can do because none of what on before that time is my fault’? It’s rather callow and puerile and we don’t need it at a time when we have this tremendous economic crisis that we’re facing right now.”
Paterson said he believes the Port Authority because of the money crisis will be forced to cut back on its planned projects moving forward.
He blamed the rebuilding of Ground Zero for taking away focus and money — seemingly blaming the administrations before him seconds before saying how puerile it is.
“There was such a grandiose plan to rebuild Ground Zero,” he said. “It was so complicated when I thought that the best way to show… resilience to terrorism was to build something simple and build it fast to let them know they couldn’t attack our country this way,” he said.
“The decision seemed to have been made to put up the most state of the art, grandiose, highly technical facilities. And when it didn’t happen, at least in the last few years, we have been in such a race to try to have a real structure in place for the 10th anniversary of this horrible attack that that has spent a great deal of money.”
