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| New York is looking for help from the Port Authority to overhaul the Tappan Zee Bridge. |
If you need a break from all the Law & Order news in The Record of Woodland Park today, just turn to Page A-3 for a cornered Governor Christie laying down the law to New York Gov. David Patterson.
Patterson, facing a $16 billion bill to overhaul the Tappan Zee Bridge, wants to put it under the control of the Port Authority and get New Jersey to help pay for the work.
Don't mess with Chris
"I can't make this any clearer to New York: Stop screwing with us," the governor told a State House news conference on Friday.
Why didn't Editor Francis Scandale put this story on Page 1?
New Jersey has long been in the shadow of New York, especially when it comes to the bi-state agency, which runs ports, airports, bridges, tunnels and the PATH lines. When a New Jersey chief executive stands up for the state in no uncertain terms, that's front page news.
Christie knows the state doesn't have a penny to spare now that he's ruled out a millionaire's tax and raising the low gasoline tax to finance road repairs and mass-transit improvements.
By refusing "to raise taxes," he's boxed himself in and has to fight off everyone with their hands out -- except for the wealthy, who financed his election campaign.
$485-an-hour law firm
At the same news conference, Christie defended his choice of a Washington, D.C., law firm at $485 an hour to fight the federal government's demand for return of the $271 million spent on the Hudson River rail tunnel project the governor killed.
The controversy over his choice of Patton Boggs recalls how Christie was criticized in 2008, when he was U.S. attorney, for awarding millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to his friends and political allies.
One such contract paid $28 million to John Ashcroft, who had been U.S. attorney general and Christie's boss. In 2005, Christie gave Herbert Stern, a former federal judge and prosecutor in Newark, and his law firm, Stern & Kilcullen, a $3 million, no-bid contract to monitor the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
I haven't seen anything in The Record this week about those no-bid contracts.
Dissing the Dows
In Local, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado could come up only with police news today.
She somehow missed an endowment from the family of CBS newsman Harold Dow of Hackenack to to pay for improvements to the television studio at the high school, where he played football and wrestled.
The family also announced two annual scholarships in the name of Dow, who died after an asthma attack Aug. 21 while he was driving in Hackensack, The County Seat reports in its Dec. 1 edition.
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