The authority trumpeted the acquisition in a news release, saying that the land would allow for expansion of the region’s port facilities; New Jersey’s new governor, Chris Christie, promoted it as a spur for job creation.
But four years later, the peninsula remains mostly barren, and the authority has taken no steps to change that. A review of court records, and interviews with current and former Port Authority officials, suggests that there was a more urgent motivation for the transaction: shifting a looming financial problem for Mr. Christie onto the authority’s ledgers.
The deal, in fact, seems to be the earliest example uncovered so far of the governor and his appointees at the authority using the huge bistate agency as a financial backstop for New Jersey, covering costs that would otherwise be shouldered by the state’s taxpayers and, in the process, enabling Mr. Christie to burnish his image as a tough-minded fiscal conservative to a national Republican audience.
