Port agency funds gifts to cultural groups, says paper

Port agency funds gifts to cultural groups, says paper    New Jersey dredged mud, New York grew flowers.
   A report in New Jersey’s Bergen County newspaper The Record over the weekend about lavish gifts for cultural institutions with funds originating from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is reverberating around the port.
   The newspaper reported that since 2003, about $100 million of port authority money has been used to subsidize cultural institutions such as the New York Botanical Garden and the Seventh Regiment Armory on Manhattan’s swank upper East Side, a venue used for antique shows.
   The paper said the gifts were from a special fund that was created as part of a compromise worked out in 2000 by then governors of New York and New Jersey George Pataki and Christie Whitman.
   At the time, the states were feuding over the hundreds of millions that needed to be spent on improvements dredging and improving the marine terminals in Port Elizabeth and Port Newark.
   Lopsided spending on marine terminals in New Jersey rather than on Staten Island and in Brooklyn, where land is more scarce, has been an issue in the region for decades.
   According to the paper, as part of a compromise, New York got $250 million for a fund controlled by Pataki and administered by the Empire State Development Corp., whose former chairman, Charles A. Gargano, was also vice chairman of the port authority.
   Major improvements have since been made to the marine terminals in Newark and Elizabeth, including deepening shipping channels to 45 feet.
   The ESDC does spend large sums on transportation and industrial development projects — just last Friday it received authorization to purchase the Farley Post Office from the U.S. Postal Service to greatly expand Penn Station.
   But the report that gifts to institutions like the American Museum of Natural History planetarium were made with port authority funds are raising questions about whether they fulfill the agency’s mission to improve transportation infrastructure and promote economic development in region.
   The newspaper quoted Anthony R. Coscia, current port authority chairman, who wasn't with the agency at the time the agreement was reached, as saying “these funds were created at a time when the two states could not find common ground on regional needs, and hopefully those times are behind us.”