Report Traces Port Authority’s Flaws to a Crumbling Business Model

[cpzilliacus]

N.Y. Times: Report Traces Port Authority's Flaws to a Crumbling Business Model

For years, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has been an easy target – a behemoth so politicized that its role in the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge last year is perhaps the scandal's least surprising element.

On Friday, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said that he was "intrigued by the idea of dismantling the Port Authority"  and dividing control between the states. A day later, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York agreed that "structural changes are a possibility"  at the agency.

But as the furor over the lane closings has grown, engulfing Mr. Christie and several of his top aides, a review of agency operations suggests that its familiar flaws – mismanagement, patronage, rivalries between the two states – are secondary to a decaying business model, done in by a relentless desire to expand beyond the agency's core transportation functions.

[Gnutella]

Sounds like the ratchet theory at work.

[Pete from Boston]

This is great stuff.  I'm buying popcorn.

The PA has been mistrusted and reviled for generations, but not enough for anyone — governor or otherwise — to ever do anything about it. 

Now implicated in the public eye with manipulating it, Christie says, "Look at this corrupt, diseased agency in which my personal appointees have gone sour and betrayed me– er, all of us!  Reform it!  Dismantle it!"

Shakespeare's ghost is seething with envy over such ham-fisted political melodrama.