In a lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., the NYSA, said the plan to create an Independent Private Sector Inspect General (IPSIG) program “is in excess of the commission’s statutory authority.”
The NYSA said in its lawsuit that the act creating the commission in 1953 never authorized such a monitoring program. It also noted the company being monitored would have to pay for the IPSIG.
The commission is reviewing 64 businesses in the port to see if they should be licensed, something that Walter Arsenault, its executive director, said the agency was supposed to be doing all along under its compact, but never did. Instead it just routinely granted businesses temporary licenses.
Arsenault is part of a new leadership team that has stepped up activity at the Waterfront Commission following a highly critical report about the agency by the New York Inspector General two years ago.
Arsenault said that if a business is not granted a license, it would be allowed to continue to operate if an IPSIG was put in place.
The plan to set up IPSIGs was cited by a New Jersey legislator Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, earlier this year, when he introduced legislation calling for the duties of the commission to be taken over by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The commission has been holding hearings for the past two months looking into what it alleges are no work/no show jobs. It said some of the persons holding these jobs have relatives or other ties to persons who are connected to organized crime.
