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It was a year ago Tuesday that two out of three local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were closed, causing a bottleneck that snarled Fort Lee streets. Since then, high-level officials have been replaced and reforms have been put in place and others proposed, though observers say only time will tell if real change occurs.

(Jennifer Brown/The Star-Ledger)

FORT LEE — Despite changes at the Port Authority in the wake of last year's politically inspired George Washington Bridge lane closures and potential conflicts of interest they revealed about its former chairman, lawmakers and experts agree the troubled agency has a long way to go on the road to real reform.

The now-infamous lane closures that choked off local access to the bridge a year ago opened the window into the politics and inner workings of the historically secretive agency that runs the region's bridges, tunnels, air and sea ports, with the potential to derail any presidential aspirations of Gov. Chris Christie.

The Bridgegate scandal has sparked some reforms inside the multi-billion dollar agency, from how commissioners vote to how often they meet in public.

Yet observers say it's not yet clear how lasting and substantive the reforms will be.

"I wouldn't call it window dressing, but I wouldn't call it real change," said state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who co-chairs a joint legislative panel created in January to probe the closures. "What's changed is some of the commissioners and some of the governor's appointees."

The first official to go was David Wildstein, a Christie-backed patronage hire who oversaw the closures. The $150,000-a-year position created for Wildstein, "director of interstate capital projects," also was eliminated.

Next out the door was Wildstein's official supervisor at the agency, Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, a Christie appointee who told lawmakers the lanes were closed for a traffic study.

Gone, too, is the agency's chairman at the time of the closures, David Samson, another Christie appointee whose resignation was announced in March amid questions about whether clients of his law firm benefited from his actions as chairman. Christie named John Degnan, a Democrat and former state attorney general, to replace him.

“The departure of Samson, Baroni and Wildstein all count on the positive side, though some credit has to be given to Wildstein; if he had not engineered the GWB traffic jams, the Port Authority might still be adrift, lacking the public attention needed to force Christie and Cuomo to think positively about reform, which is now important to their own political strength and political future,” said Jameson Doig, an emeritus professor of political science at Princeton University and author of “Empire on the Hudson,” a history of the Port Authority.

Christie also fired his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, after it was revealed she sent an email to Wildstein stating, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," because, Democrats say, Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich declined to endorse Christie for re-election.

In addition, Christie cut ties with an adviser and former campaign chairman also linked to the closures, Bill Stepien. The blunt-spoken governor is a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and the scandal could dampen his possible presidential aspirations.

Port Authority officials who kept their positions include Executive Director Patrick Foye, who ordered the unprecidented closures reopened on Sept. 13, and Vice Chairman Scott Rechler, who led several reforms on the way the board does business. Both are appointees of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

One reform led by Rechler was the creation of a Special Committee on Oversight, which produced changes such as the introduction of roll call votes on each agenda item, replacing the old practice of holding a single vote on a list of items. Another change mandated the public announcement of recusals during meetings, with recused commissioners required to leave the room before a vote.

In April, the committee hosted a public round-table discussion that included Doig and other academics, citizen watchdogs and former agency officials, during which there was consensus on the need for commissioners to be independent of the governors, and for the agency to refocus on its core mission of enhancing regional transportation.

Additional reforms the agency identified in the wake of the lane closures include:

• An increase in the number of meetings held in public session this year compared with 2013.

• Development of a scoring process for ranking state-of-good-repair projects in the capital plan.

• Creation of an email address, reform@PANYNJ.gov, for the public to submit recommendations for changes or reforms.

• New limits on donations of surplus equipment and vehicles to municipalities and non-profit organizations to avoid the appearance of political favoritism.

• A change in the layout of the board room at the Port Authority's Manhattan headquarters, putting public seating squarely in front of board members and executives.

Rechler and Degnan issued a joint statement in advance of the anniversary of the closures asserting that “the Port Authority has made changes for the better, but it’s clear that more reform is needed.”

For Assemblyman John Wisniewski, who is Weinberg’s co-chair on the joint investigative panel, what’s really needed is two governors who will appoint qualified commissioners and then let them direct the agency without political interference.

That ideal is enshrined in the agency’s bylaws, which call for the commissioners to name their chairman and to hire an executive director, who then hires his own deputy executive director or assistant directors and upper-level staff. Doig said this was how the agency functioned successfully for most of its 93-year existence.

But in recent decades, the bylaws have been undercut by an informal custom in which the governor of New Jersey names the agency’s chairman and its deputy executive director, while his New York counterpart names the executive director and the vice chairman, a process that is supposed to maintain equal representation of both states’ interests.

Critics, however, say the custom has led to divided leadership within the agency and operational dysfunction. The lane closures, which were kept secret from the executive director by New Jersey officials more loyal to their governor than to the people they served, is one example they cite.

“The agency has not been allowed to run independently,” said Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) “We either believe in the people that are appointed to be the managers of that agency or we don’t.”

Neither Christie’s nor Cuomo’s offices responded to requests for comment.

One example of how difficult reform through legislation can be is a disagreement between Wisniewski and fellow lawmakers over whether to approve a stand-alone bill that would subject the Port Authority to the public information laws of both states.

The bi-state legislation has been approved by both state Senates and the New York Assembly, but Wisniewski, who chairs the Assembly Transportation, Public Works and Independent Authorities Committee, where the bill was assigned, has failed to schedule a hearing for it.

He insists that without broader reforms that would make the agency more independent, the public information bill is little more than a token gesture that could also allow lawmakers and the governors to declare victory and walk away.

But Weinberg, a co-sponsor of the bill, said she believes reforms can be achieved incrementally.

Steve Carrellas, a New Jersey spokesman for the National Motorists Association, said one bottom-line reform agency officials could implement would be to cancel two remaining increments of a controversial 2011 toll hike scheduled to take effect this December and next, "to show that they're serious about recognizing the sins of the past."

But despite being an advocate for toll payers, Carrellas is also realist, and recognizes that the Port Authority does have a capital plan, with maintenance and new project spending based on revenues, and he recognized that a toll roll-back would have far-reaching implications for the agency.

Indeed, a change to the agency's tolling structure is just the kind of revenue-related reform that bond analysts have cautioned against. An April 14 report by Moody's Investors Service affirmed the agency's Aa3 bond rating, but warned that "the current negative public opinion surrounding the authority" could make it harder to raise tolls in the event of another economic downturn. The report also expressed concern over talk of breaking off parts of the agency, particularly those that operate in the black, which could "negatively pressure the rating," which would make borrowing more expensive.

Still, even Moody's found common ground with reform advocates calling for less interference by the governors, asserting in the report that, "A complex governance structure makes the authority politically vulnerable to interference that can result in delays, revenue diversions for non-system assets, and added costs for major capital projects essential to the region."

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