Two years ago this month, Patrick J. Foye, a middle-aged, white-bearded, bespectacled government official little known beyond his workplace and family, arrived at a legislative hearing in Trenton. Under oath, he told a story that provided the first clear view of near-gangsterism at the top levels of one of the region’s most powerful agencies, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

To ordinary human beings, what Mr. Foye did seems only a matter of common sense. The executive director of the Port Authority, Mr. Foye discovered that traffic at the George Washington Bridge had been intentionally rechanneled for four days to cause colossal tie-ups. He ordered the folly brought to an end. Any normal person with two bits of brain to rub together would have done the same. Maybe.

The mind could not boggle fast enough to keep up with the bridge episode, which of course is well-known by now — conceived, federal prosecutors say, by aides and appointees of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, as an act of retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat, for failing to endorse his re-election.

But less well understood is that Mr. Foye acted at some cost to himself. Part of the reforms prompted by this and other revelations was the elimination of Mr. Foye’s job. Instead of an executive director picked by the governor of New York, the authority has said it will hire a chief executive officer selected by the governors of both states.