Are taxpayers footing huge Bridgegate legal bills?

The Modern, a 47-story residential building under construction in Fort Lee, overlooks the three George Washington Bridge access lanes at the center of Governor Christie's biggest crisis since he took office in 2010.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The print edition still hasn't hit my driveway, so I turned to NorthJersey.com for the latest developments in the Bridgegate scandal.

Everybody is hiring highly paid legal heavyweights to represent them, but I can't find a word about whether taxpayers are going to be stuck with the bills.

Governor Christie; Bridget Anne Kelly, the deputy chief of staff he fired; and David Samson, chairman of the Port Authority, have retained new counsel, presumably to defend their official actions.

Are we poorer?

So, does that mean we have to pay the bills? What about the outside lawyer representing the state Legislature's joint investigative panel?

Kelly sent an e-mail to one of Christie's cronies at the Port Authority in August, saying, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

The access-lane closures on the George Washington Bridge caused gridlock in the Democratic borough in what is widely viewed as political retribution for Mayor Mark Sokolich's refusal to endorse the governor's reelection. 

Borgs get richer

The Record's print edition was several hours late on Wednesday, even though local streets had been cleared of snow.

At 1 this afternoon, today's paper is nowhere to be found.

We can thank the cut-rate, rinky dink delivery system the Borgs have used for eons, exploiting low-wage workers who have to hold two or three jobs to make ends meet.

How an editor can ruin a project

Seventy-eight years ago today, the George Washington Bridge opened to traffic, beginning a process that would change northern New Jersey forever.

Image via Wikipedia

Three years ago, on the bridge's 75th anniversary, The Record produced a special tabloid to explore the impact this glorious span had on our suburbs and our lives, and assigned one of its most talented writers to it. (A lower level was added in 1962, and many North Jersey residents refer to it as Martha Washington.)

You'd think the front page of this tabloid would carry a photo of the bridge, which it did, and maybe the magnificent Jersey Palisades or even the high-rises in Fort Lee. No. Due to project editor Tim Nostrand's colossal lack of editorial vision, photographer Tariq Zehawi brought back images of the bridge and upper Manhattan.

And no one noticed until after the tab was published. When this was pointed out to Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who doesn't pretend to be a journalist, he said readers would look at the cover photo for only a few seconds, so it was "good enough." It certainly wasn't worth hiring a helicopter for, he added.

Guess what? The Record did hire a helicopter for that shot.