Director defends N.Y. Waterfront Commission

Director defends N.Y. Waterfront Commission    Waterfront Commission of New York Executive Director Walter M. Arsenault said the independent agency is needed, despite a bill introduced Thursday that would fold it into the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Lesniak

   Arsenault said one of his two commissioners, Ronald Goldstock, has described the waterfront as the “last bastion of organized crime.”
   “Without a specialized unit, with specialized knowledge, it’s a very insular world for outsiders its a difficult world to understand. It’s a difficult world for outsiders to gain entry to, get trust of longshoremen. The need that Congress saw in 1953 for a specialized group of people to go after the people still exists,” Aresnault said.
   The bill from New Jersey State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, would abolish the Waterfront Commission and make its functions and duties part of the work of the bi-state port authority.
   “I feel 10 percent of their functions are valid and could be done much more efficiently by the port authority,' Lesniak said in an interview. 'And I think that the rest of their functions are wasteful, and an unnecessary intrusion into the legitimate practices of the industry.”
   The Waterfront Commission has opposed legislation that has been passed in New Jersey and is pending in New York that would give terminal operators more freedom in determining how many longshoremen they want to hire, rather than having to clear increases in the workforce with the commission, Lesniak said.
   Controlling the labor supply may have been valid in the 1950s, but today was “overreaching. It sends the wrong message to terminal operators and shippers across the world in terms of a business atmosphere of our port,” he said.
   Lesniak voiced concerned about a Waterfront Commission plan that would allow independent monitors — Independent Private Sector Inspect Generals (ISIGS) — to oversee waterfront businesses if the agency finds a business lacks “good character and integrity” to operate.
   The commission is reviewing all 64 businesses in the port to see if they should be licensed, something Arsenault said the agency was supposed to be doing all along under its compact, but never did. Instead it just routinely granted businesses temporary licenses. He said since a scathing New York Inspector General report was issued two years ago, the commission has been “complying with its statutory mandates and doing a good job.”
   Arsenault said he did not know if any of the existing businesses would not be granted licenses, a process to be completed by December. But he said having ISIGS appointed would allow businesses to stay open if the Waterfront Commission decides not to grant them a license.
   ISIGS have been used elsewhere, he said, but they are not necessarily widespread. For example, a similar program for suppliers of goods and services to the City of New York resulted in only a dozen companies operating with ISIGS out of 10,000 to 15,000 firms.
   Arsenault called putting the Waterfront Commission functions under the port authority “a bad idea. The port authority has an inherent conflict. It’s the landlord to all the stevedoring companies and it is going to be called upon to determine the character and fitness of its tenants?”
   As to the cost of the Waterfront Commission, Arsenault said, “if you want to talk about what increase the cost of moving a container through the port of New York, the organized crime tax is much more expensive than anything else.” ' Chris Dupin