Elimination of the deputy executive director position was critical to the reform efforts because of the role a former occupant played in the Bridgegate scandal. | AP Photo Murphy to try to reinstate scandal-tarred Port Authority position

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy plans to restore a position at the bistate Port Authority that reformers blame for facilitating the George Washington Bridge scandal and that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had agreed to abolish.

A senior official with the Murphy administration confirmed Tuesday that the Democratic governor intends to fill the position of deputy executive director, though he’s made no final decision as to whom he will appoint.


The post was last occupied by Deborah Gramiccioni, who resigned in 2015 in anticipation of the job being eliminated as part of broad changes atop the long-troubled Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Murphy’s decision drew a quick rebuke from Albany, with a spokeswoman for Cuomo saying the fellow Democrat wouldn’t stand for a change to the current leadership structure.

It was one of the first signs of strife between the two men, both of whom have vowed to work together.

“The split authority between the Executive Director and Deputy Executive Director was the source of the politicization of the Port Authority and directly led to Bridgegate,” the spokeswoman, Dani Lever, said in a statement to POLITICO. "We cannot take steps backward."

Should he decide to assert his authority, Cuomo could theoretically block Murphy's bid to fill the position, a New York official pointed out. According to the Port's bylaws, the deputy executive director is an officer of the Port and requires board approval. Cuomo appointed half of the board's members.

Murphy’s move to restore the position, coupled with the New Jersey Legislature’s recent embrace of Port Authority reform legislation that fails to encompass wholesale governance changes, has led some observers to conclude the post-Bridgegate reform era is over.

“A critical part of post-Bridgegate reform was the selection of an executive director in a national search,” said Martin Robins, director emeritus of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University. “We’re not having that ... and that’s a terrible development.”

Elimination of the deputy executive director position was critical to the reform efforts because of the role a former occupant played in the Bridgegate scandal.

Gramiccioni’s predecessor, Bill Baroni, was convicted for his role in the conspiracy to close access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, an effort to punish a Democratic mayor for failing to endorse Christie, a Republican, for reelection. Baroni and a former deputy chief of staff to Christie, Bridget Anne Kelly, were both convicted of roles in the conspiracy after a federal trial.

David Wildstein, the self-described Bridgegate mastermind, got off with probation after cooperating with the feds. It was Wildstein, via a website he runs with former Observer editor Ken Kurson, who first reported Murphy was planning to restore the position.

The deputy executive directorship dates back to 1995, when then-New York Gov. George Pataki wanted to name a Port Authority executive director whom former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman considered unqualified. Whitman would accede to Pataki’s request only if she got to name a deputy executive director in return.

Thus was born a bifurcated control structure that allowed Baroni and Wildstein to concoct and carry out the Bridgegate scheme without the knowledge of then-Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye.

It’s the “structure that led to the dysfunction that then caused Bridgegate,” said John Wisniewski, the former New Jersey Democratic assemblyman who helped uncover Bridgegate and co-chaired an investigation into the scandal.

Under pressure to demonstrate action in the aftermath of the scandal, in 2014, a panel created by Christie and Cuomo called for the abolition of the deputy executive director position. In its place, the panel recommended a unitary executive director who answered only to the board. It also recommended the chairmanship of the board rotate between the two states.

In the ensuing years, the board tried and failed to find an executive director candidate who could win the approval of the two governors. The search went dormant. Murphy ran for governor.

Before Murphy was elected, the Bridgegate trial concluded and the future governor issued a statement saying the episode “has proven the need for a new way of thinking and a new style of leadership in both the State House and the Port Authority.”

Reformers were uniform in their dismay.

“It certainly raises alarms with regard to whether the kind of insidious political activities that occurred under Christie, using the deputy’s position, might return,” said Port Authority historian and Princeton University professor Jameson Doig.

New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat who co-chaired the legislative inquiry into the Bridgegate scandal, had recently agreed to remove the new leadership changes from reform legislation she’s sponsoring in Trenton.

She did so, she said, because appointees from both sides of the Hudson River had finally found a way to work together and she didn’t want to upset the status quo. The appointment of a new deputy executive director could upend the current relationship, she said.

“I don’t know why that position has to be recreated at this time,” Weinberg said. “I’m sure the governor has a reason for it, which has not yet been shared.”