Like how Christie's vow to clean up authorities like the Port Authority had, in fact, veiled an effort to do just the opposite, by turning the massive agency into a political tool and a soak-the-toll-payer to fix the state budget operation.
At the first hearing, we saw how the governor's top staff appointee to the Port Authority, Bill Baroni (who has since resigned), operated like a huckster. In moments like the one in this video, it became clear something fishy was going on with the closing of the local Fort Lee access lanes back in September:
It was Baroni's smell test failure that really lit a fire under lawmakers. And in the next few hearings, the drama kept coming.
We learned from guys caught in the middle — legitimate, professional Port Authority employees, not political hacks. Like Robert Durando, the bridge director who was ordered to close the lanes, who knew that doing so was illegal but also that he could get fired if he didn't:
But now, after months of hearings by the second committee formed to investigate the lane closures (the Legislative Select Committee on Investigations), we're learning little.
And even if they are just shielding the Christie administration, restless Republicans on the committee are sounding more and more justified in their calls for less focus on the whodunit and more on the what-do-we-do-now?
As Assemblywoman Amy Handlin puts it, we've confirmed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is run by guys with red plastic noses, but can we get on with the process of trying to fix it already?
For seven hours Monday, it seemed like the moment we've all been waiting for might be at hand.
There was Christie’s chief of staff Kevin O’Dowd, the highest ranking person to testify so far and supposedly a crack prosecutor, recounting instance after instance where he acted more like an ostrich than a would-be attorney general, ignoring or missing glaring warning signs that something seriously fishy was going on under his nose.
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