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Mayor Steve Fulop swears in Robert Cowan as police chief in October, 2013. Fulop recently demoted Cowan to deputy chief.

(Reena Rose Sibayan)

Two months after Gov. Chris Christie’s crew deliberately snarled traffic at the George Washington Bridge, another manufactured traffic jam bottled up one of Jersey City’s port terminals for several hours on consecutive days.

This one was the brain-child of Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, the ambitious young Democrat who took office last year and already has his eye on the governor’s mansion.

“We had 350 to 400 trucks that couldn’t leave,” says James Devine, who ran the terminal as its CEO. “When you realize it’s a deliberate effort, that’s just not acceptable.”

Ask Fulop, and he'll tell you this was a routine safety check, one of several across the city in recent months. His motive, he swears, was pure.

But there is a darker possibility. The terminal land is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. And only days before this "safety check" in November, Fulop had announced the city was filing a mega-lawsuit against the agency, seeking $400 million in unpaid taxes.

So was this a stunt to pressure the Port Authority? Did the mayor, like the governor’s crew, misuse the machinery of government?

Then chief of police Robert Cowen, who is locked in a bitter feud with Fulop, says the answer is yes. The mayor ordered this over his objections, he says, and the motive was to pressure the Port Authority.

Devine has no doubt: Police officers at the scene told him they felt it was improper, he says. And in his seven years at the terminal, nothing like this had ever happened.

“Truck drivers make money on what moves,” he says. “You sit them in the yard for an extra two or three hours, and that’s significant.”

A spokesman for the Port Authority said diplomatically that the agency was “extremely concerned” and that the move was unprecedented.

When I asked Fulop about this, he said he had documents that exonerate him. After several days of delay, he offered up two emails that describe other traffic stops in the city.

Exoneration? Not close.

Asked to discuss these competing claims, Fulop refused to comment. Which makes you wonder: Why would the normally talkative mayor be hiding under his desk if he did nothing wrong?

Sadly, Democrats on the special committee investigating Bridgegate are showing their partisan colors by refusing to investigate this.

A Republican on the committee, Assemblywoman Amy Handlin, asked the committee to issue subpoenas to Fulop and Cowen, to hear their testimony under oath, to dig for documents as the committee did in Bridgegate. But Democrats refused.

“This falls smack into our laps,” says Handlin (R-Monmouth). “I’m left to conclude that the real problem here is it’s an allegation of abuse by a Democratic official rather than a Republican official. There’s no other explanation.”

Republicans have been griping about the committee since Day One, and most of the criticism has been nonsense. The committee has followed the Bridgegate bread crumbs carefully.

But by turning a blind eye to potential wrongdoing by a leading Democrat, the committee is handing critics a weapon and breathing new life into the charge of partisanship.

Granted, Bridgegate is a more serious case. It paralyzed Fort Lee for four days over the protests of police and ambulance crews, putting the public safety at clear risk.



And the evidence of wrongdoing in Bridgegate was much stronger from the start. The committee issued subpoenas only after the media revealed the infamous email from Patrick Foye, the Port Authority's executive director, who called the lane closures illegal and ordered them reversed.

Finally, in Jersey City, the mayor's main accuser, Cowen, has an ax to grind. The mayor recently demoted him, over unrelated issues, and Cowen is likely to challenge the move in court.

Still, why not support Handlin’s motion to investigate a case that clearly falls within the committee’s mandate?

“It’s a diversionary tactic to try to take the committee’s eye off the ball,” says Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), the committee co-chair.

Two Democrats signed a letter with Republican members asking the acting attorney general to investigate. But again, that's treating Fulop's traffic jam with a softer touch than Christie's.

To Devine, the CEO of the terminal, the irony is that these “safety checks” created a hazard on the docks as moving trucks and loading equipment were squeezed together.

“The drivers were all trying to get around one another and cutting each other off,” he says. “When it’s like that, tempers flare, and you don’t know what can happen. It really was an egregious safety issue.”

But was it deliberate? The circumstantial evidence is strong. But we’ll probably never know for sure.

And that, apparently, is just fine with Democrats in Trenton.

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 392-5728.

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