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Rachel Canning lawsuit: 'Wonderful family' torn asunder as the world watches, passes judgment
[Posted by Star-Ledger Staff March 09, 2014, 12:09 AM]By Mark Mueller and Naomi Nix/The Star-Ledger
From the outside, it seemed a happy suburban home.
Sean and Elizabeth Canning raised three beautiful daughters, the oldest an honors student, an athlete and the captain of her cheerleading squad. There were dinners out and romps with the dogs on the front lawn. A family trip to the Bahamas. Smiles and silly faces in photo after photo.
"A wonderful family," a neighbor said.
In a flash, that facade has been blown apart for all the world to see.
In a house convulsed by conflict, 18-year-old Rachel Canning did more than test teenage boundaries, court papers show. She charged across them, ultimately running away from home and, with encouragement from her friend's father, making the life-changing decision to file suit against her parents for financial support.
Now, every lurid detail of the Cannings' life has spilled across the internet, muddying the family's reputation and creating new barriers to reconciliation, according to lawyers, psychologists and family friends.
"This is a horrible, horrible, out-of-control situation," said Bari Weinberger, a New Jersey attorney who practices family law and who has been closely following the case. "If this girl had walked into my office and said, 'This is the situation,' I wouldn't have taken the case, because you could see where it was going to go. It has no place in the public sector. It belongs in a family counselor's office."
That Rachel Canning's feud with her parents has transfixed the public isn't surprising, touching on issues that resonate across cultures: parental responsibility, teenage rebelliousness, underage drinking, the legal system's proper use, the definition of entitlement.
Media outlets as far as way as Japan have followed every development. Fake Facebook profiles of the Lincoln Park teen have sprung up by the dozens. Scorn rains down daily on Twitter.
Barring rapprochement, the case is likely to remain in the public eye until at least next month, when Family Division Judge Peter Bogaard will hear further arguments from lawyers for Canning and her parents.
Last week, Bogaard denied Canning's motion for an emergency order that would have granted her immediate support. The teen is seeking more than $650 a week, payment of tuition at Morris Catholic High School, where she is a senior, and future college tuition.
Bogaard, expressing doubt about the young woman's demands, urged Canning and her parents to reconcile.
"This family is well worth the effort to salvage," he said. "It does appear more energy has been utilized to tear up this family than to figure out how it can be brought back together."
The Colonial-style home sits on a quiet, manicured block in Lincoln Park. Two dogs bark at passers-by. A small statue of the Blessed Mary stands on the front lawn.
Ernest Einholz said Sean Canning, the borough's retired police chief, and his wife, a legal secretary, were the first in the neighborhood to welcome him when he moved in across the street two months ago.
"I've had maybe four conversations with them," he said. "They seem like really, really nice people."
Einholz said he hasn't met Rachel Canning. She left before he moved in.
Several neighbors declined to comment, saying they didn't want to intrude in the family's business. Two doors down from the Canning home, a woman who answered the door would say only, "All I can say is that they're a wonderful family."
Court papers, however, paint a portrait of a family in turmoil.
In a sworn certification accompanying her suit, Rachel Canning contends her mother harped at her about her weight, calling her "fat" and "porky." By her junior year, she said, she was so concerned about her appearance she developed anorexia and bulimia, ultimately dropping to 92 pounds.
Her father, she said, was "inappropriately affectionate," alleging he "constantly put his arm around me in public and would kiss me on the cheek."
At a wedding before her senior year, she said, her father gave her shots and mango martinis until she was drunk enough to black out.
At the same time, Canning contends, her parents placed unreasonable limits on her, forbidding her from spending time with her boyfriend. And at one point last fall, she said, they took a five-day vacation to Las Vegas, leaving her to watch over her sisters, then 15 and 13.
On Oct. 29, 2013, she left, moving in for two days with her boyfriend's family, then with the family of her best friend, Jaime Inglesino. The girl's father, former Morris County freeholder John Inglesino, is fronting the legal fees for Canning's suit.
Canning said her parents took swift retribution, refusing to pay her tuition to Morris Catholic for her final semester. The school is owed more than $5,300.
In response to their daughter's claims, Sean and Elizabeth Canning flatly deny emotionally abusing her, saying in court papers they have done everything in their power to care for her, to treat her eating disorders and to see that she receives therapy.
Sean Canning wrote that his daughter's claim of inappropriate affection is fabricated.
"There was never anything remotely sexual or conduct that could be considered in any way sexual," he said. "I love my daughter as a daughter — nothing more. She was the apple of my eye."
An investigation by state child welfare officials found no evidence of abuse, the court documents show.
The couple say their daughter refused to abide by household rules they considered liberal and spun further out of control, drinking to excess every weekend and cutting school.
Rachel Canning was twice suspended from Morris Catholic, once on the suspicion that she was drunk at a homecoming dance, the second time for skipping classes.
The couple said their daughter stole money from them, snuck out of the house on a weeknight to attend a party until the early morning hours and used a credit card to buy clothes for herself without permission.
They said she was especially verbally abusive to her mother. In one profanity-laced voicemail in July of last year, Canning told her mother she wanted to defecate on her face, the papers show.
"I (expletive) hate you and, um, I've written you off, so don't talk to me," she said, according to the documents. "Don't do anything. I'm blocking you from just about everything. Have a nice life. Bye, mom."
The couple acknowledged going to Las Vegas but said the girls were under adequate supervision by friends and neighbors. Sean Canning said he also arranged with his successor as police chief to increase patrols around the house during the trip.
The Inglesinos, the Cannings said, have led their daughter astray and interfered with their ability to reconnect with her. They said they want their daughter to come home.
"If the Inglesino family had not enabled this situation to an absurd level, Rachel may have actually learned a vital life lesson and returned home and kept our family whole," the Cannings wrote. "Instead the Inglesino family has made a difficult situation horrible and broken apart a family."
The Cannings declined to comment for this story. John Inglesino, a well known attorney, also declined to be interviewed. In his own sworn certification, he said he was funding the lawsuit out of a genuine concern for Rachel Canning's welfare.
Longtime friends give him the benefit of the doubt.
"I don't know all the details, but this young lady is a friend of his daughter, and John is very much a family-oriented man," state Sen. Anthony Bucco (R-Morris) said. "I think he just wants to help her."
Bucco added he was surprised the story exploded, drawing interest from around the globe. He hopes it dies down soon.
"I wish everyone luck and that this thing will go away and that everyone will live happily ever after," he said.
Weinberger, the family law attorney, said she has seen many cases where fractured families are reunited. She believes it's still possible for the Cannings if Rachel Canning steps back from the brink, abandoning her suit and returning home.
"The harm that's been done doesn't need to be completely irreparable," Weinberger said. "She's a kid. She made a mistake, and now she's getting bad advice. Her parents are trying to open the door. Maybe she feels she's gone too far, but she can still make amends."
A developmental psychologist told The Star-Ledger she, too, sees hope for the family. While Rachel Canning took an "extreme" step by filing suit, the teen and her parents can regain some sense of trust if they find a middle ground in their power struggle, said the psychologist, Deborah Wagner, who has a practice in Ridgewood.
"I absolutely think they can recover from this," Wagner said. "Assuming this is a family that loves each other, then everything needs to be on the table for negotiation."
Staff writer Ben Horowitz contributed to this report.
Sandy grant revisions leave some towns winners, some losers
[Posted by Erin O'Neill/The Star-Ledger March 06, 2014, 6:30 AM]At least 16 municipalities and authorities have been told they will receive a total of $1.1 million more in state energy grants in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, an analysis shows, because of errors in the grant process. Ten others will be getting less than they expected.
The grant program has been the focus of attention since the mayor of Hoboken said her city did not get its fair share of recovery aid because of political considerations — an accusation the state has denied.
The $142,080 grant to Hoboken was not among those amended because of the mistakes.
Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the team working on scoring applications for the energy grants was responsible for manually entering data into 19,000 fields.
As the team of state employees has been vetting its work, mistakes or missing information was found and corrected.
At issue are more than $25 million in grants being awarded under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program Energy Allocation Initiative, intended to help fund alternative energy solutions — such as backup generators and solar power installations — that can operate when utility power grids fail, as they did across the state during Hurricane Sandy.
The grants were awarded under a scoring rubric based upon such factors as population and critical need.
But an examination of the awards shows many communities hardest hit by the storm received no funding, while some towns in areas that received far less damage were getting large awards.
For example, $556,240 was earmarked for Nutley to purchase diesel backup generators, but Atlantic City, near where the storm came ashore, got nothing.
On the initial list of awards the governor's office released on Oct. 9, the Bergen County Utilities Authority was not among the grant recipients. In an updated list released by the governor's office in January, the authority was included and scheduled to receive a $142,080 grant.
Ron Salzano, the deputy coordinator of Bergen County's Office of Emergency Management, said most communities were grateful to receive any money.
"I'm sure that some of the municipalities were not happy that their numbers went down," he said.
"But I also think they were also grateful that they were awarded something. At this stage, I think anything is better than nothing."
Since no funding has been distributed, Ragonese said no community has actually lost money.
"We still have a team that's working on the data, that is still scoring towns and scoring applicants and putting together the final touches," he said.
The award totals announced so far are preliminary, and as the team of state employees continues refining its work, there may be additional changes, Ragonese said.
"The process is being done fairly," he said.
An analysis of the grants awarded to 156 municipalities, counties and regional authorities shows 16 were notified of increased funding — some by $100,000 or more — after the state reviewed the awards. Mahwah, Tenafly, Newark, East Brunswick and Elizabeth were among those getting more funding.
Raymond Roe, the emergency management coordinator for Mahwah, said the state initially notified the Bergen County town it would receive an award of $50,000.
"Then they re-contacted us and said that was an error on their part and we were eligible for $186,000," he said.
According to a list of requests towns and other entities made to the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, the revised award was the full amount of Mahwah's request for generators. Roe said the township hopes to use the money to install generators at the municipal complex.
At the same time, the preliminary awards were cut in 10 other municipalities, including Brick, Trenton, Leonia and Millstone. Wood-Ridge saw its initial grant cut by more than $200,000.
Tara Paxton, assistant planner and grants administrator for Brick Township, said that on Oct. 9, the town was notified it was awarded $422,080 through the energy grant program.
Brick initially requested $1.26 million for projects connected to nine generators. But Paxton said the town was later notified the award amount was incorrect.
"We were told that it was an error," she said. "They dialed it down."
Questions over how the money was awarded under the energy grant program were first raised in January, when Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said her city was cut out of critical disaster aid because she would not support as a redevelopment initiative backed by the Christie administration.
The mayor said Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno personally warned her Sandy aid would be tied to the project's outcome, a charge Guadagno has called "not only false but illogical."
Zimmer said she applied for $100 million in grants to help mitigate against future disasters.
Of that, $1.7 million was earmarked for energy projects. Hoboken received $142,000 under the energy initiative.
Star-Ledger staff writer Ted Sherman contributed to this report.
• Hoboken storm funding: The programs at the center of the controversy
• Chris Christie's Sandy recovery boss addresses Hoboken storm funding controversy
Amid growing airport volumes, Port Authority names new aviation director and deputy
[Posted by Steve Strunsky/The Star-Ledger March 05, 2014, 3:04 PM]The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey named the general manager of LaGuardia Airport to lead the bistate agency's aviation department, a key position that has been vacant for the past eight months.
Thomas L. Bosco, a Staten Island resident and 28-year Port Authority veteran, becomes the agency's new director of aviation, as air passenger and cargo volumes -- and even the number of airports under Port Authority control -- has continued to grow in recent years.
Bosco replaces Susan Baer, who left the agency in July after having become the first woman to head the agency's aviation department in 2009.
The agency also announced that Huntley Lawrence, who had been director of the Port Authority's New Jersey airports and worked at the agency as long as Bosco, was named deputy aviation director.
In his $235,014 position as aviation director, Bosco is responsible for the operations of the agency's three major airports in the bi-state region, Newark Liberty, John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia aiports, as well as Teterboro, a general aviation facilty in Bergen County, Stewart Airport, a regional hub in New York's Orange County, and Atlantic City International Airport, which the Port Authority has managed for the South Jersey Transportation Authority since July.
Newark, LaGuardia and JFK make up the world's busiest metropolitan airport system, and last year's total of 111.6 million passengers was a record for the three NYC-area airports. With the system at capacity, the Regional Plan Association projects demand for 130 million passenger-trips by 2029, and the Port Authority is looking into ways of expanding capacity in the coming decades.
Bosco's promotion means a pay hike of more than $55,000. Huntley, whose new position pays $198,744, is getting a $23,000 raise.
Agency officials say they're worth it.
"Tom and Huntley have proven themselves eminently capable in all of their prior posts to lead the agency's Aviation Department forward in the coming years," Deputy Executive Director Deborah Gramiccioni said in a statement.
• Passenger traffic at Newark, other area airports climbed despite Sandy
•Newark, JFK airports eye expansion as demand expected to rise
Humbled Teresa and Joe Giudice of 'Real Housewives' plead guilty to financial fraud
[Posted by Jason Grant/The Star-Ledger March 05, 2014, 7:00 AM]NEWARK — Gone was the bravado. Gone were the antics, such as Joe Giudice batting away overzealous, darting photographers.
Indeed, gone was the Jersey toughness that has made Teresa and Giuseppe "Joe" Giudice famous in recent years as central cast members on Bravo's reality television show "The Real Housewives of New Jersey."
For several seasons, the married couple from Montville has starred as lightning rods on the TV program, known for their brawls with others featuring harsh words, table-flipping tirades, backstabbing strategies and, in Joe Giudice's case, sometimes fists.
Yesterday, they appeared humble and somewhat glum as they walked into a packed federal courtroom in Newark and pleaded guilty to numerous conspiracy, mortgage and bankruptcy fraud charges.
The couple face the possibility of prison, though it appears to be a surer outcome for Joe Giudice, 43, than Teresa Giudice, 41, as their respective lawyers each said yesterday after the hearing that Joe Giudice had taken a more active and central role in a string of financial frauds that spanned 2001 to 2008.
The pair will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Esther Salas on July 8, and Miles Feinstein, Joe Giudice's attorney, said his client will almost surely be given prison time. Under federal sentencing guidelines, he faces a recommended sentence of 37 to 46 months.
But Feinstein also said yesterday outside of court that Teresa Giudice had a more "minimal role" in the frauds. And he painted Joe Giudice as gallantly falling on a judicial sword for his wife and family. Joe Giudice pleaded guilty to five counts in a 41-count superseding indictment against the couple; Teresa Giudice, to four counts. Some counts in the indictment had carried maximum sentences of 20 and 30 years in prison.
"Joe … acknowledged what he had done, and he did this to help his wife in the best possible way because … she has received the most favorable plea agreement that she in fact could get," Feinstein said. "So he showed his love for his family, he acknowledged responsibility — despite the potential consequences."
Meanwhile, Henry Klingeman, Teresa Giudice's lawyer, made clear after the hearing that he will push hard for a sentence of only probation for Teresa Giudice, saying she bears less responsibility than Joe Giudice for their nearly decade of fraud and noting that the couple has four young daughters who need to be cared for. Under sentencing guidelines, Teresa Giudice would receive less than 2 ¼ years in prison, and in her plea agreement with the government, Klingeman has carved out the ability to ask for a lesser sentence than that.
Throughout yesterday's 75-minute hearing, both Giudices stood — though they looked fashionable still, Teresa wearing a sleek dark pantsuit, after stepping into the courthouse in a belted aubergine coat, Joe wrapped in a tailored pinstripe suit — and again and again they answered Judge Salas' questions softly.
"Yes, your honor," was their almost meek refrain, as they admitted to a litany of actions that authorities have alleged amounted to them conspiring for years to defraud banks and other lenders with fake documents while seeking nearly $5 million in construction loans, home equity loans and mortgages.
They also admitted to misleading a federal bankruptcy court in 2009 by failing to disclose Teresa Giudice's true income, while concealing businesses they owned and rental income.
The couple admitted to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, bankruptcy fraud by concealment of assets, bankruptcy fraud by false oaths, and bankruptcy fraud by false declarations. Joe Giudice also pleaded guilty to one count of failure to file a tax return in 2004. In doing so, he agreed to be held accountable for $1.2 million in income he never reported between 2000 to 2008, causing a $224,211 loss to the government. Salas also noted that both Giudices will have to forfeit money under their joint plea agreement.
The amount will be determined at their sentencing hearing, lawyers said. However, Teresa Giudice must hand over an initial payment of $200,000 on or before sentencing.
Meanwhile, Joe Giudice, a citizen of Italy, also faces the possibility of deportation after serving his sentence, authorities have said. Feinstein said he will oppose any deportation vigorously, contending it would be "inhumane" and unfair to Joe Giudice and his family, while noting that Joe Guidice has been living in the United States since he was a toddler.
"Today, I took responsibility for a series of mistakes I made several years ago," Teresa Giudice said in the statement yesterday. "I am heartbroken that this is affecting my family — especially my four young daughters, who mean more to me than anything in the world."
Clean sweep of NJ Transit's top brass continues
[Posted by Mike Frassinelli/The Star-Ledger March 04, 2014, 3:44 PM]
The shakeup of NJ Transit's upper management is becoming a clean sweep.
In the same week that Jim Weinstein's four-year tenure as NJ Transit's executive director officially ended, his directors of rail and bus operations, Kevin O'Connor and Joyce Gallagher, are being forced out, said sources close to the agency.
Just like that, the top boss at NJ Transit and the top officials in the rail and bus divisions of the statewide transportation agency are gone or going.
Ronnie Hakim, the former New Jersey Turnpike Authority executive director and an ally of state Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson, took over Saturday as NJ Transit executive director.
NJ Transit officials declined comment, and Simpson said O'Connor and Gallagher were still working at the agency.
But several sources said it was a matter of semantics, and the pair of high-ranking officials close to Weinstein have been told to resign because NJ Transit was "going in a different direction."
O'Connor, vice president and general manager of rail operations for the past three years, oversaw the best year for on-time performance in NJ Transit history in 2012, with 96.4 percent of trains arriving within the standard industry measure of 5 minutes and 59 seconds of the scheduled time. But that year also ended with hundreds of trains and locomotives being damaged after an ill-fated decision to leave them in rail yards in Kearny and Hoboken that flooded during Hurricane Sandy.
About three months after Sandy, O'Connor got into a testy exchange with Joe Clift, a former Long Island Rail Road director of planning, about NJ Transit's preparations for Sandy. Clift during a breakfast business meeting distributed copies of questions asking whether O'Connor would "accept responsibility for the decisions that led to $100M in damage."
"No, I am not going to resign," O'Connor said at the time.
Last week, Simpson told reporters the rail cars "should have been moved to higher ground, and they weren't."
"What I've been told is basically what you've been told: there was a decision made to leave the rail cars, because their SLOSH (Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes) maps or their forecasts only showed a 20-percent likelihood of the yard flooding," he said. "To me, if that's the case, 10 to 20 percent, that's a risk that I wouldn't take. But obviously we didn't find out about that until afterwards, so Monday morning quarterbacking is not a good thing."
O'Connor, 54, who made $185,000 annually, joined NJ Transit 12 years ago and previously served as deputy general manager of transportation and general superintendent of New York Penn Station, North America's busiest transit hub. Before that, he spent more than 20 years at Amtrak, working his way up from train attendant to general manager of the national railroad's Philadelphia line.
What was supposed to be a summer job in June 1977 — one week after his high school graduation — launched a career. O'Connor was hired as a coach and sleeping car attendant with Amtrak. He worked primarily on sleeping cars and coaches on long-distance trains out of New York, traveling to such cities as Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City and New Orleans. On the "sleepers," he made up rooms for customers, dropped beds out of the wall, assisted with luggage, provided information, brought customers food and drink from the dining car and made sure they were awake and ready to get off at their destination.
Gallagher, vice president and general manager of bus operations for the past two years, was praised for getting buses back on the road within 48 hours of Hurricane Sandy – even before traffic lights were restored in some towns – and providing a much-needed symbol of normalcy after the most damaging storm in New Jersey history.
She also was the top official in the bus division at the time that MyBus Now arrived, allowing bus riders – who outnumber NJ Transit train riders by a 2-to-1 margin – to check their smartphones or computers to find out in real time when the next bus will arrive.
Gallagher, 61, who made $175,000 per year, oversaw the second-largest fleet of buses in the nation. Previously, she directed the Americans with Disabilities Act Services division of NJ Transit, and also held leadership positions with the agency's bus and light rail divisions.
She joined NJ Transit in 1980 and was project manager on a task force responsible for restructuring interstate bus service in Passaic County. She became deputy general manager of Southern Division bus operations, responsible for five garage locations and three major terminals in South Jersey.
For every model bus operator like Gerald Cameron, NJ Transit's safest bus driver, Gallagher seemingly had to put aside her daily duties to address bizarre incidents involving other bus operators (Gallagher never called them "drivers" because she didn't think that word did them justice for piloting an 18-ton vehicle).
One bus operator took passengers on a hell ride, making them two hours late for work, and another was shown on camera allegedly pleasuring himself as he drove in the Lincoln Tunnel. Then, a homeless man with an affinity for vodka wore an NJ Transit jacket while directing buses into a parking lot in Manhattan.
NJ's only lung transplant program left holding its breath
[Posted by Kathleen O'Brien/The Star-Ledger March 04, 2014, 6:45 AM]The state's only lung transplant program has been inactive since last August because of staffing vacancies, officials said, and there is no firm date for its resumption.
Newark Beth Israel Medical Center informed the national agency overseeing organ transplants last July that it would be unable to perform transplants. Its Advanced Pulmonary Center would continue to provide post-transplant care to its previous surgical patients, according to a spokeswoman for Barnabas Health, the hospital's parent company.
That leaves patients with two main choices: New York City or Philadelphia.
Because of their fragility outside the body, lungs need to be transplanted quickly. "From the donor to the recipient, six hours is generally okay. Four hours is better," said Joseph Roth, chief executive officer of NJ Sharing Network, the agency that handles procurement of transplant organs for the northern portion of the state.
That, in turn, dictates that patients must be able to reach the hospital within two hours from the time a phone call summons them.
Donna Scheibner, one of the 42 New Jersey residents awaiting a transplant, lives by that timetable. The 59-year-old personal trainer and former bodybuilder has a rare, terminal lung condition for which a double transplant is her only hope.
She's getting on waiting lists at Columbia University Medical Center, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia and even the Cleveland Clinic to better her chances. Yet she frets about how quickly an ambulance or private jet could get her to whichever hospital comes through with a matching lung.
Recently, it took her almost three hours to travel from her Sussex County home to a surgeon's appointment in New York.
"For us, in New Jersey, we have no choice," she said. "New Jersey needs to have more options."
Does the Newark Beth Israel hiatus put New Jersey patients at a disadvantage when a lung becomes available?
Probably not, experts in the field of organ transplant say.
"It's based on the hospital where they're listed, not on the residence of the patient," said Joel Newman, a spokesman for the United Network for Organ Sharing, the national agency whose formula determines who gets an available organ.
Every patient is given a score based on how desperately they need a lung, how otherwise healthy they are, and how long they've been waiting. Then they are ranked on that hospital's waiting list based on their score.
"As you get sicker, you move up the list," Roth said. The order on the list can change hourly.
That's an improvement over the days when it was first-come, first-served, which resulted in people lower down on the list dying before a lung became available, said Garry Nichols, a transplant recipient who belongs to the support group Second Wind.
A patient who was first on Newark Beth Israel's list might end up fifth, or eighth or 15th when transferred to the New York or Philadelphia lists. Conversely, a New Jersey patient moving onto a New York or Philadelphia list might take over a high slot and bump someone else down, transplant experts explained.
Lungs that become available in New Jersey now likewise travel out of state, going to transplant programs within a 500-mile radius, according to the UNOS spokesman.
Nationally, 1,669 people are awaiting a lung transplant. This contrasts sharply with kidney transplants, which have a waiting list of nearly 107,000.
Since Beth Israel's entry into the transplant field in 1992, it has performed 75 transplants, averaging about six a year, according to federal data. By contrast, the hospitals where Scheibner is being evaluated do roughly 60 a year, she said.
The Newark program has vacancies in the key positions of program director and surgeon, Barnabas spokeswoman Ellen Greene said. "A search is being conducted for a program director who will then participate in the selection of a surgeon. A search for a surgeon is continuing," she said.
The temporary shuttering of the transplant program at Newark Beth Israel doesn't impact Scheibner directly because she preferred a larger hospital anyway. Her illness – pulmonary veno-occlusive disease – occurs in only 1 in eight million people.
Her doctor at Columbia, thoracic surgeon Joshua Sonett, said his New Jersey patients are at no disadvantage for having to travel to his facility, which is the only transplant center for all of New York State. "Most people in New Jersey are closer to us than half the people on Long Island," he said.
Wanna buy a bridge? Neighboring state turns to private sector to fix crumbling spans
[Posted by Mike Frassinelli/The Star-Ledger March 03, 2014, 7:00 AM]As New Jersey wrestles with how it will pay for its crumbling roads and bridges once the Transportation Trust Fund runs out of money in two years, Pennsylvania is looking to enter into a public-private partnership to reconstruct its spans.
Color New Jersey's transportation commissioner intrigued.
"Anytime you can get the private sector to have skin in the game, everybody saves money," said Commissioner Jim Simpson, who plans to float the idea, among other options, before New Jersey's Legislature.
"With respect to heavy-duty infrastructure, somebody needs to have skin in the game to watch the costs, because these projects outlive many of the political appointees like commissioners and boards of directors," he said. "The only people who are really going to watch the budget are the people who have something to lose."
Under the plan by Pennsylvania, 500 structurally deficient bridges would be replaced within five years. The winning bidder, referred to as the "development entity," would design, build, finance and maintain the bridges and be reimbursed over a period of 25 to 35 years.
In its "request for qualifications," Pennsylvania's DOT wrote:
"The Project is expected to create efficiencies through economies of scale, innovation and optimal risk allocation that will allow PennDOT to deliver more bridges at a lower whole life cost than a traditional design, bid, build procurement. The Project will also help improve the connectivity of the Commonwealth's transportation network, while minimizing the impacts on the traveling public. The improved connectivity, including removal of weight restrictions on new bridges, will increase the efficiency of freight and commercial movements which benefit the economy of the Commonwealth."
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania also increased its gas tax by 9.5 cents per gallon at the beginning of the year, allowing a larger pot of money to fix bridges.
What's in it for the bidders?
"In simplest terms, they will have guaranteed work, said PennDOT spokeswoman Erin Waters-Trasatt, adding that the successful bidder could design bridges similarly and save costs on design work.
Because the winning bidder will be paid for reaching milestones, the bidder will have a stake in properly maintaining the bridges.
Waters-Trasatt noted that while the bidder will finance and maintain the bridges, PennDOT would retain ownership and its workforce would continue to do basic maintenance such as snow removal.
Pennsylvania has nearly 4,500 bridges considered structurally deficient — the largest number in America — or close to one-fifth of the 25,000 state-owned bridges. The average age of the spans is more than 50 years old.
New Jersey is close to the middle of the pack nationwide, with about 10 percent of its 6,557 bridges, or 651, deemed structurally deficient. New Jersey's most famous decrepit bridge, the Pulaski Skyway between Newark and Jersey City, is undergoing a $1 billion rehabilitation that will close northbound traffic toward New York for up to two years beginning April 12.
State Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), who chairs the Assembly Transportation Committee, said some economies of scale could likely be realized with a public-private partnership — referred to in the industry as a PPP or P3 — but cautioned against looking at it as a cure-all.
"There's room for a variety of different methods to secure the funding for transportation, but what has to be made explicit before embarking is the decision as to who is going to pay the bill," he said.
"My frustration with P3s and other novel ways of funding transportation is that they are often presented as a fairy tale solution."
Wisniewski is a proponent of increasing New Jersey's gasoline tax — one of the lowest in America — as a way to
help provide a dedicated funding source for New Jersey's roads, bridges and transit projects.
So is Janna Chernetz, New Jersey advocate for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a regional transportation policy watchdog group.
"Exploring the concept of PPP to help address New Jersey's structurally deficient bridges is certainly an option," she said.
"However, the real focus must be on identifying sustainable revenue sources for the Transportation Trust Fund. The gas tax, which has not been raised since 1988, is the best way to increase revenue and reduce dependency on debt so that New Jersey can pay for much-needed transportation projects."
Simpson, the transportation commissioner, said that the way construction projects are done in New Jersey at the moment, there is no compelling incentive to reduce costs.
"The professional engineers that we all get, they're all on the meter. Click, click, click, click — the meter is going," he said. "The contractors, by nature, are looking for change orders and anything that they can get, because they're already getting hammered at the lowest price — it's low-bid."
"If you don't have the money to knock out all these bridges you have to get done, you get the private sector," he added.
"They've got the money. They knock it all out and then you pay every year. Meanwhile, the bridges are all done early. Instead of tackling 10 bridges a year, you tackle 100 bridges a year."
• Report: Many N.J. bridges need repairs, more funding
• Pulaski Skyway lane closures to begin later than initially thought
Newark Archbishop's pricey retirement home spurs backlash as parishioners withhold donations
[Posted by Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger March 02, 2014, 6:15 AM]Every year, without fail, Joe Ferri writes a $100 check to the Archdiocese of Newark for the Archbishop's Annual Appeal, a fundraising drive that benefits a variety of religious causes.
This year, Ferri left the empty envelope on his pew at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Bloomfield. He's done writing checks.
"If this is the only way I can be heard, so be it," said Ferri, 70. "I'm disgusted. The archdiocese is not going to get another penny out of me."
Two weeks after The Star-Ledger disclosed that Archbishop John J. Myers is building a 3,000-square-foot addition on the expansive home where he will spend his retirement, it appears the work will cost the archdiocese far more than the $500,000 allotted for construction.
Parishioners, infuriated by what they call a tone-deaf show of excess at a time when Catholic schools are closing and when the pope has called on bishops to shed the trappings of luxury, say they're cutting off contributions entirely or sharply curtailing them.
Others said they will continue supporting their local parishes but will ignore the annual appeal, which has been heavily promoted in churches over the past month across the archdiocese, home to 1.3 million Catholics in Essex, Hudson, Union and Bergen counties.
At stake are millions of dollars that support schools, youth ministries, retired priests and Catholic Charities, the nonprofit agency that runs homeless shelters and provides a wide array of services for the poorest residents. In recent years, the appeal has brought in between $10 million and $11 million annually, said Jim Goodness, a spokesman for Myers.
While acknowledging the good work the church does, the parishioners said they believe their complaints will be ignored if they don't make the point more indelibly with their pocketbooks.
"The only language the church understands is money," said Maria Bozza, 69, who has urged fellow parishioners at Holy Family Church in Nutley to withhold contributions to the archdiocese. "We need to start an 'empty envelope month' to replace the archbishop's annual appeal. If parishioners in every church in the Newark Archdiocese sent in an empty envelope, then they will get the message."
Bozza is among hundreds of people who contacted The Star-Ledger about the addition to the Hunterdon County home, which Myers will make his primary residence when he is replaced by his co-archbishop, Bernard Hebda, upon his retirement in 2016. Myers now chiefly uses the house as a weekend retreat, Goodness has said.
Most of the parishioners who reached out to the newspaper live in the Archdiocese of Newark. But dozens of people from the Paterson, Metuchen and Trenton dioceses said they, too, are withholding weekly contributions in protest.
"Unfortunately, this is going to hurt giving everywhere," said the Rev. John Bambrick, pastor of a parish in Jackson Township, part of the Diocese of Trenton, and an occasional critic of Myers' leadership. "Beyond the archdiocese, Catholics begin to question, 'Does my bishop do this? Does my bishop live like this?' It's very similar to the abuse crisis in that the acts of one person affect all of us."
Bambrick said he understands parishioners' frustration. Many priests share it, he said, but are unwilling to speak out publicly.
"The average priest lives in two rooms with a bathroom, and the pope lives in a hotel room," Bambrick said, a reference Pope Francis' decision to live in a guest house instead of the papal palace. "I don't understand why a 75-year-old man needs a 7,500-square-foot mansion with two swimming pools."
Parishioners, Bambrick said, are now faced with a dilemma. By refusing to donate, he said, they are most certainly sending a message. But they're also depriving the neediest residents of care, he said.
"It does hurt the poor," Bambrick said. "As priests, that's the hardest thing for us. It doesn't hurt the archbishop. There's no way to hold him accountable. But the poor are held accountable for his bad decisions."
In church last Sunday and in parish bulletins, some pastors forcefully pushed back against the notion Myers had done anything wrong, exhorting parishioners to continue giving and characterizing coverage of the renovation by The Star-Ledger and other news outlets as anti-Catholic.
"For the love of God, the media is our devil," the Rev. Peter Palmisano, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Virgin Church in Garfield, wrote in the Feb. 28 bulletin. "DO NOT LET OPINIONS stand in the way of us doing God's work, living the Gospel and helping the archbishop do the same. PLEASE — if you have not yet made your appeal to the (archdiocese) — make it now."
An elegant retreat
The archdiocese paid $700,000 for the existing 4,500-square-foot home in 2002, using funds from the sale of a Shore house once used by retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, then the archbishop of Newark, Goodness has said.
The Hunterdon County home — situated on 8.2 wooded acres in Franklin Township, part of the Diocese of Metuchen — has five bedrooms, three full bathrooms, a three-car garage and a basement office, according to documents on file in the municipal building.
An elevator was installed in 2011 at a cost of about $35,000, the records show. A large, kidney-shaped swimming pool sits behind the structure. The house was assessed last year at $776,000, with taxes of nearly $19,000.
The archdiocese, a tax-exempt organization, has paid the property tax each year because the house is not primarily used for religious functions, Goodness said.
The three-story addition, now under construction, will add 3,000 square feet and will include a bedroom with a sitting area, a large study with an attached library, a full-floor "gallery" on the third level, two bathrooms, three fireplaces and its own elevator.
A "wellness room" will contain a 14-foot by 7-foot exercise pool and an adjoining whirlpool tub, identified on blueprints as a hot tub.
Goodness said the addition's cost will be borne by the sale of other properties, chiefly a Connecticut house once used by retired Archbishop Peter Gerety, who now lives in a residence for retired priests in Rutherford.
Donors also have contributed to the renovation, Goodness said, but he has declined to say how much the restricted donations amount to.
Under no circumstances, he said, will funds from the annual appeal be used for the construction or for ancillary costs, such as furnishing the home or landscaping work.
In a lengthy statement Friday, the spokesman urged parishioners to support the fundraising drive, saying it "all goes to people in need." More than 50 percent of contributions — or more than $5 million — is earmarked for Catholic schools, he said. Another $3 million goes to Catholic Charities, he said. About $1 million is shared with parishes that meet or exceed fundraising goals.
The statement can be found in its entirety here.
"It's painful to hear some people talking about stopping their contributions to the annual appeal and to the church in general," Goodness wrote. "By withdrawing their support, who are they harming? The very people that we as a church are pledged to help."
Prepared to protest
Mary Gannon has empathy for those people. She gives to soup kitchens, to the Sisters of Charity and to Saint Vincent Academy, an all-girls high school in Newark. She volunteers her time to a variety of organizations.
But she says she won't donate to the Archdiocese of Newark.
"It's like the archbishop is out of it," said Gannon, 68, of Florham Park. "He doesn't understand how this looks or what the pope is trying to tell his priests. He just seems not to care."
Gannon said she hasn't been this angry at the archdiocese since she was a recent high school graduate. Then, she and her friends protested outside Llewellyn Park, the affluent gated community in West Orange, when she learned Archbishop Thomas Boland lived in a mansion there.
Today, Gannon says, she is prepared to protest again.
"Somehow the message has to be delivered," she said. "People can let him know by demonstrating or by withholding money from the appeal. Complacency is terrible. We have to take a stand."
A call for action
"Judge the action taken, not the man."
Kevin Davitt says his pastor, the Rev. Thomas Wisniewski, spoke those words during Mass last week at St. Catharine's Church in Glen Rock. Wisniewski knew some members of the parish were deeply troubled by the construction on Myers' country home, Davitt said, and tried to address it head on.
But to Davitt's thinking, the man and the action are one in the same. Davitt, 59, refused to put his money in the collection basket, as did others in church that day, he said.
And while he had already donated to the archbishop's annual appeal — he says it was a "significant sum" — Davitt won't do so again unless Myers reimburses the archdiocese or fully funds the construction with private donations.
"This just adds insult to injury," said Davitt, who worked as a spokesman for former Gov. James E. McGreevey from 2001 to 2003 and who now works for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York. "We're all still grappling with the problems of pedophilia and sexual inappropriateness of our priests, and then to have this come out of the blue is very discouraging to me as a Catholic."
Pope Francis, he said, has been a "breath of fresh air" for the church, inspiring people and speaking out against self-promotion and grandiosity. In the face of that message, Davitt called the addition to Myers' retirement home "mind-blowing."
Last week, Davitt expressed his frustration in an email to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Vatican's ambassador to the United States. Dozens of other parishioners told The Star-Ledger they had likewise written to the ambassador, known as the nuncio, or to Pope Francis at the Vatican.
"I am hopeful you might be able to communicate to our Holy Father the need to remove the archbishop from his position in Newark," Davitt wrote.
'This affects us all'
Tom Reeder grew up in a conservative Catholic home. Priests were regulars at dinner. Financial support to the church has been a way of life. He typically drops $40 in the collection plate at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Pittstown, in the Diocese of Metuchen.
Last Sunday, he contributed $5. Today, he might not contribute at all.
"I know I'm not in the Archdiocese of Newark, but this affects us all," said Reeder, who lives in Union Township, Hunterdon County, just a few miles from Myers' retreat. "There are a lot of hard-working people out there who give, and here you have this display of arrogance. It's appalling."
Reeder, 48, counts himself among those hard workers. He built a sheet-metal manufacturing and installation business out of nothing. Last week, as he worked on the roof of a Jersey City building, he said he loves the church and hopes people continue to attend Mass.
At the same time, he said, "I'm not an apologist or enabler."
"This shows the need for reform," Reeder said. "And the only way they will listen to us is if we hit them in the wallet. Hard."
• Newark archbishop's future retirement home undergoing a $500K addition
• Archbishop Myers calls new right-hand man a 'gift,' rejects claims he's out of favor with pope
Port Authority officials: Battle over toll hikes was all for show
[Posted by Steve Strunsky/The Star-Ledger March 02, 2014, 6:00 AM]On Aug. 5, 2011, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey issued a jaw-dropping proposal to immediately raise bridge and tunnel tolls by $4 for E-ZPass subscribers and $7 for cash customers, followed by another increase in 2014. The proposed hikes amounted to a 75 percent increase for E-ZPass users and 112.5 percent for those paying cash.
The authority also proposed PATH fares go up $1, from $1.75 to $2.75.
The reaction was swift and angry, with commuters and lawmakers blasting the increases.
Gov. Chris Christie, who said he had no advance knowledge of the proposal, was among them.
"You're kidding, right?" Christie told reporters three days after the announcement, describing what he said when briefed on the proposal.
But within two weeks, after a blizzard of 36 press releases by the Port Authority on behalf of toll hike supporters and after public hearings packed with union laborers backing the plan, Christie and his New York counterpart, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, consented to a more modest increase. Even then, the governors conditioned their approval on a top-to-bottom financial review of the agency.
The thing is, a former Port Authority official told The Star-Ledger, "It was all bullshit."
From the start, the fix was in, said that former official and five others who occupied key Port Authority posts when the toll hike was rolled out and eventually approved.
The whole process, the authority officials said, was orchestrated from the outset to make the governors look good even as they reached deeper, through the long arm of the authority, into the public's pockets.
The former Port Authority officials (five who are no longer with the agency and one who is still there) outlined the strategy and execution of the plan in separate interviews with The Star-Ledger. Each asked that their names not be used because they feared repercussions from speaking out even after they had left the agency.
The first proposal disclosed to the public, the former officials explained, was deliberately inflated. Also planned was Christie and Cuomo's shocked — shocked! — reaction and an unusual one-day series of eight public hearings. Those hearings were all held during the morning or evening rush hours to discourage attendance by irate commuters, but were stacked with union members who backed the hike because of the construction jobs it would fund.
All this, the sources said, was designed to set up the governors' ostensibly reluctant approval of a more modest hike, accompanied by their stern admonitions that this was it and that the agency had better get its financial house in order once and for all.
But it was all Hollywood on the Hudson, the six sources said, scripted all the way through.
"They knew what the toll increase would be," said one former official. "They set the governors up to look like heroes. It was all a farce."
And, the sources said, the fictional plan was led by the same people who two years later would arrange the September 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closures, which have engulfed the Christie administration in scandal.
The two were Bill Baroni, the former Republican state senator and GOP campaign lawyer named by Christie to the agency's deputy executive director post in early 2010, and David Wildstein, the former political blogger and Republican mayor of Livingston, where he went to high school with Christie.
Baroni's lawyer, Michael Himmel, said his client had "no comment" on the assertions.
Wildstein's lawyer, Alan Zegas, called the officials' version of the toll hike "inaccurate."
He did not specify how. He also suggested there was a conspiracy to tar his client. "It is a snippet, and a not fully accurate one, of reality," Zegas said.
The Christie administration did not return phone calls or emails. Ranking officials at the authority also did not comment. Cuomo's office likewise did not respond to calls or emails.
While none of those officials would comment, a committee chaired by Assemblyman John Wisniewski has subpoenaed all documents and correspondence between the Port Authority and the Christie administration regarding the toll hike.
Wisniewski was one of the original skeptics of the hike when it was announced, and he still isn't buying it.
"My suspicion is — I think it's pretty well understood as fact — that the original announcement of whatever the toll increase was was all theater, so that would allow the governor to say, 'No, no, it has to be lower,' " Wisniewski said in an interview following the most recent round of subpoenas.
For him and others, the toll hike scenario was too pat. How, the skeptics asked, could Christie not have known about the initial proposal when he had appointed two of his closest political allies to Port Authority leadership, Chairman David Samson and Baroni?
One source said complete responses to the latest subpoenas from the legislative committee would reveal that the bridge closures and the toll hike were engineered out of much the same playbook.
A minimum of agency officials were made aware of what was happening with the toll hike and sworn to secrecy under the implied threat of losing their jobs, the six sources said. And both actions included some of the same players.
"He'll find emails," the official said of Wisniewski, who co-chairs the joint committee with state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen). "And he'll find the emails between Baroni, Wildstein and the governor's office. And he'll also find emails between Baroni and Cuomo's office."
To keep track of who knew what, a list was kept of those with knowledge of the scheme, the former officials said. And just as Port Authority officials have testified that the lane closures were kept secret from the agency's current executive director, New York appointee Patrick Foye, Foye's predecessor, Christopher Ward, was also excluded from the planning and implementation of the toll hike.
According to the former agency officials, the toll hikes were planned behind the scenes, primarily by Wildstein though Baroni was Wildstein's official supervisor.
The former officials said the two seemed to act in tandem, depending on what the situation called for.
"I always got the impression that they played good cop-bad cop, and Wildstein was always the bad guy, and Baroni was always the good guy," one official said. "Within the agency, they would send Wildstein, and when they wanted a cheerleader, they would send Baroni."
All about timing
Ward, a 2008 appointee of former Gov. David Paterson of New York, broached the idea of a toll hike with Christie's incoming team in the spring of 2010, as the agency's looming financial problems became increasingly clear, the former officials said.
But for the New Jersey side, the problem was political as well as financial. Christie had campaigned for governor in 2009 as an anti-tax fiscal conservative and had criticized his Democratic opponent, then-Gov. Jon Corzine, for increasing tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike.
So, the former officials said, Ward's talk of a toll hike was rebuffed, with the assertion that, because most bridge and tunnel users are from New Jersey, raising tolls was a Garden State prerogative.
" 'This is a New Jersey thing, this is our thing, this is not your thing,' " one former official said, recalling New Jersey's response.
However, as time went on, the former officials said, the New Jersey side acknowledged the need to raise tolls, particularly if the agency was to forge ahead with a capital plan that included redevelopment of the World Trade Center site and other projects more strongly backed by Christie.
Most notable of those was a plan to raise the Bayonne Bridge roadway to ensure the viability of container ports in Newark and Elizabeth, which generate tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity annually.
Putting off the toll hike until 2011, the former officials said, not only allowed Christie's anti-toll, anti-tax campaign rhetoric to fade from the public's memory, but it also meant that Cuomo, a Democrat who took office in January 2011, would be in office to share in the toll hike decision — and any political fallout from it.
The keeper of the list
Then, as during the September 2013 lane closures, Wildstein was seen by colleagues as the hand behind the machinery. Before joining the Port Authority, Wildstein's public-sector experience was limited to a single, unpopular term as mayor of Livingston, the Essex County suburb where he grew up and first got to know Christie when they both attended Livingston High School. And while some former colleagues viewed Wildstein as an operative drawn to politics and to Christie out of a fascination with power, others had a more sympathetic view of his motives.
"I really think that he believed that he was doing the political version of god's work," said one of the officials. "He had a very difficult time as mayor of Livingston, and this was a chance at redemption."
The sources say the toll hike operation was run out of a conference room on the 15th floor of the Port Authority's Manhattan headquarters on Park Avenue, and only those on Wildstein's secret list had access to the room.
A component of the operation was to create the appearance of a groundswell of public support for the toll hikes to help offset the inevitable commuter anger. So, the officials said, Wildstein presided over a blizzard of press releases — 36 in three days — in support of the project. They were issued by the Port Authority on behalf of groups ranging from the Building and Construction Trades Council, whose members stood to gain financially from projects funded by the hike.
"They produced all of those (releases) from that room," said one former official.
Others identified as having taken part in the toll hike campaign included Maggie Moran, a former Corzine deputy chief of staff and Cuomo campaign official, who at the time was director of business development for the Laborers International Union of North America, or LIUNA. Port Authority Commissioner Ray Pocino is a vice president of the union.
The former officials said Moran was tasked with ensuring a strong LIUNA turnout at the public hearings. The officials said ordinary commuters, on the other hand, were deliberately discouraged from attending by the scheduling of the eight hearings on a single day, Aug. 15, either during the morning or evening rush hours, at locations largely unfamiliar to the general public.
The laborers' union said it was proud of its role in pushing through the toll hike, which was intended to fund billions of dollars in infrastructure projects and create thousands of jobs for union workers.
"LIUNA Vice President Pocino has an entire staff dedicated to supporting infrastructure investment and economic growth, so supporting the Port Authority fare increase was a no-brainer," read a statement from the union. "Maggie, along with many other staff at the union, was involved in all aspects of building a coalition in support.
"The public had a variety of opportunities to express their views including online, written testimony, and the hearings," the statement added. Moran declined comment.
in the public
As anticipated, there was an outpouring of rage over the initial toll hike proposal.
Then-U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) — a harsh critic of the governor's cancellation of the ARC commuter rail tunnel in late 2010 — called the increases an "outrageous proposal" that would be unacceptable even if cut by half.
Steve Carrellas, a New Jersey delegate to the National Motorists Association, called the proposals "unbelievable" and "insane in this economic environment."
In a joint statement, Christie and Cuomo said that although the Port Authority was facing financial issues, so were families in the states of New Jersey and New York. Separately, Cuomo characterized the initial proposal as "a nonstarter."
But as planned, according to former officials, the governors ultimately agreed to a more modest increase: from $8 for all cars, to $9.50 for E-ZPass users and $12 for cash customers immediately, followed by smaller increases in each of the next four years. The plan was approved by Port Authority commissioners, and tolls will top out at $12.50 for E-ZPass subscribers and $15 for cash customers in December 2015, totals that will be less than the $14 and $17 initially proposed.
A week before the initial, higher toll hike proposal was announced, Christie and Cuomo had dinner at the Beacon restaurant in Manhattan, a meeting disclosed that September, when Cuomo's office released his appointment schedule. Word of the dinner further fueled suspicion that the governors had agreed to an elaborately fictionalized toll hike scheme, but Christie refused to say what he and Cuomo discussed while they broke bread.
"It doesn't change any of the statements I made previously," Christie told reporters on Sept. 22, 2011. "I was informed of the toll increase, of the magnitude of the toll increase after that dinner."
It was after their dinner that the governors sent a joint letter to Samson, directing him and the board to approve the more modest hike.
"We did not want to see any toll increase," Christie and Cuomo wrote to the chairman on Sept. 18, the eve of the toll vote. However, given the agency's financial straits, the governors concluded, "an increase cannot be avoided."
But as the skeptics suspected, former officials said, it was just for show.
"It was all orchestrated to make the governors look good," the official said. "But who takes the black eye in that scenario? The agency."
Carrellas of the National Motorists Association said it all makes sense now "in light of what we now know about behavior at the Port Authority."
He added, "As a voice of reason, this should be the straw that broke the camel's back about real reform at the Port Authority."
The six former and current officials the paper spoke to provided one final revelation.
The first toll hike proposal was, they say, much like the one that was eventually implemented, but getting there was sheer theater.
After Christie and Cuomo's dinner, the current and former officials say, Baroni made a trip to the Statehouse, taking with him a set of numbers that included the dollar amount of a modest toll hike and its projected revenues — all worked out by the staff.
Upon his return, however, Baroni presented staffers with a set of much higher increases, which he said the governors had agreed on.
"This is crazy," one former official recalled thinking.
After the higher increase was announced to the public, officials were once again baffled by the governors' joint statement expressing concern over the size of the proposed hike, as well as by Christie's exclamation: "Are you kidding me?"
State Police dismantle international crime ring that shipped cars from NJ to West Africa
[Posted by James Queally/The Star-Ledger February 28, 2014, 7:15 AM]The cars were taken by various methods, disappearing from New Jersey's streets as soon as they were stolen.
For months, criminals were taking high-end vehicles from residents of northern and central New Jersey by luring them into roadside traps or stealing them at gunpoint.
But these men had a plan beyond a simple carjacking, a scheme that acting Attorney General John Hoffman Thursday called a "natural" evolution for carjackers.
For the past year, vehicles including Jaguars, Land Rovers and Porsches were being taken from New Jersey and shipped to West Africa for six-figure profits, authorities said.
The international carjacking ring came crashing down Thursday, when a phalanx of law enforcement agencies led by State Police arrested 26 people and seized more than 160 cars valued at more than $8 million, completing a 10-month investigation dubbed "Operation Jacked," Hoffman said.
"We will not allow this threat to go unanswered, undealt with, and we will not allow it to go without a fight," he said. "Our best fight."
Seven men were charged with masterminding the ring, which Hoffman said was responsible for the theft of hundreds of vehicles. Many of the cars slipped out of the country through Port Newark, Port Elizabeth or the Howland Hook Marine Terminal in Staten Island, authorities said.
All of the recovered vehicles are in the process of being returned to their owners by way of their insurance companies, Hoffman said.
While the investigation began months prior to the December carjacking and killing of Dustin Friedland outside the Short Hills mall, Hoffman invoked the Hoboken attorney's death several times Thursday.
"The murder several months ago of Mr. Friedland in Short Hills mall shows how far carjackers will go to achieve their goal," he said.
The theft ring included suspects who stole the cars, others who arranged their transit overseas and "fences" who negotiated sales, Hoffman said.
Twenty-seven of the recovered vehicles were taken in carjackings, including one incident in Newark that left a woman bloodied after she was repeatedly pistol-whipped.
In other cases, Hoffman said, carjackers would pull up behind a vehicle and stage a minor motor vehicle accident. Once the driver exited, the carjackers would pounce.
Police noticed a pattern of those carjackings on state highways last year, which sparked the investigation, said Col. Rick Fuentes, superintendent of the State Police.
Other times, Hoffman said, thieves would stalk wealthy neighborhoods and then steal the vehicles while the driver was preoccupied at an airport or car wash, or attack valets to steal keys to luxury vehicles.
The method of stalking wealthy haunts was similar to the alleged actions of the four men charged in Friedland's death, but there was no connection alleged between that case and "Operation Jacked."
Once stolen, the cars were hidden in underground garages or parking lots to "cool off," Hoffman said. After a number of weeks, the thieves would hire another driver to bring the stolen vehicle to a "fence," who would sell it to one of the organization's ringleaders.
The bosses conspired with "shippers" who would doctor paperwork and have the vehicles loaded into shipping containers, hoping they would slip past checks at local ports, Hoffman said.
"Most of the containers are filled up and most of the paperwork is done off-site," he said. "So this does not actually happen in the port in sight of everybody."
Each carjacker was paid up to $8,000 per vehicle, according to Hoffman, who said the ringleaders raked in six-figure sums once the vehicles were shipped to West Africa.
Carjackings have surged in the state in recent years because improved security systems have made it near impossible for thieves to swipe parked cars.
Police said the appearance of car trafficking rings like the one dismantled Thursday could signal another shift.
"When you're talking about $100,000 in profits that's available, that's going to drive a more sophisticated criminal network. You see it with cars, you see it with drugs," Hoffman said. "It's a fairly natural evolution, unfortunately."
• NJ, NY carjacking ring broken up; 29 charged, luxury cars recovered
• 160 vehicles stolen in NJ, NY recovered as authorities bust international car theft ring
NJ man's deportation stopped after his baby's rare ailment requires testing
[Posted by Tom Wright-Piersanti/The Star-Ledger February 26, 2014, 6:45 AM]NEWARK — A Honduran man in the United States illegally was released from federal custody yesterday, drawing cheers from a crowd of supporters in Newark, after immigration officials learned genetic testing on the detainee would be critical to the treatment of his gravely ill son.
Carlos Oliva-Guillen, 26, was due to be deported after his arrest last month on traffic warrants. That decision is now on hold while Immigration and Customs Enforcement reviews the case, spokesman Bryan Cox said. The agency will continue to supervise Oliva-Guillen while the review is pending, Cox said.
For now, at least, Oliva-Guillen has his freedom, which advocates and his attorney say is critical to the course of treatment for his 7-month-old son, Jencarlo. The boy has hyperinsulinemia, a rare pancreatic disorder.
By performing genetic testing on Oliva-Guillen — now scheduled for April 14 — doctors will be able to determine if the infant can be treated by removing 15 percent of his pancreas or if it will have to be removed almost entirely, leaving just 5 percent of the organ. Under the latter scenario, Jencarlo would be placed on a feeding tube.
Emily Navas, Oliva-Guillen's girlfriend and Jencarlo's mother, said doctors told her the decision could not be made without testing her boyfriend.
The couple's supporters and Oliva-Guillen's attorney have held up the case as a symbol of a ruthless immigration policy that has resulted in a record number of deportations.
Department of Homeland Security figures show about 2 million immigrants have been removed from the country during the first five years of the Obama administration, including a record 409,000 in 2012. That's as many people as President George W. Bush deported in eight years.
"A lot of people are going through this and they're not speaking up," said Navas, 21, of Delran in Burlington County. "We have to fight like a community. We have to pressure President Obama to stop deportations, to give us immigration reform."
Cox, the ICE spokesman, said he could not more specifically address Oliva-Guillen's case because the man did not sign a medical waiver.
An ICE official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the restrictions, denied Oliva-Guillen was symbolic of anything. The official said that when Oliva-Guillen's attorney applied for a stay of the deportation late last month, he made no mention of a medical condition involving the detainee's child.
"As soon as ICE leadership learned of this, we immediately conducted a review," the official said.
On Feb. 12, the official said, Children's Hospital in Philadelphia requested blood from Oliva-Guillen so a medical procedure could be conducted on the child. That blood was sent by FedEx two days later, the official said.
Texas authorities discovered Oliva-Guillen was in the U.S. illegally in 2006, his attorney, Matthew Archambeault, said yesterday. He was detained, released and notified he would have to appear in court.
Shortly thereafter, he moved to New Jersey and informed immigration authorities, the lawyer said. Oliva-Guillen assumed his hearing would be moved here and was unaware he missed a court date in Texas, Archambeault said. As a result, a warrant was issued for his deportation.
Under ICE rules, Oliva-Guillen's status as a fugitive made him a priority for deportation if caught. After his arrest last month, the wheels were set in motion.
Archambeault contends ICE was prepared to continue with his client's removal from the country even after the attorney and doctors explained the baby's condition to a deportation officer in Elizabeth.
It was only under pressure from immigrant groups that ICE acted, Archambeault said.
"His sick child got people to take notice," he said.
As a priest offered a bilingual prayer to the advocates outside the Newark detention center yesterday, Navas leaned into her boyfriend's shoulder and cried, their son swaddled tightly inside a car seat between them.
"I used to take family days for granted, you know. They were just a regular day," Navas said. "Now I'm gonna cherish every single second that I have with them, because I know it's not granted forever."
Staff writer Mark Mueller contributed to this report.
Hysterectomies: Controversy grows over rare cancer risk
[Posted by Kathleen O'Brien/The Star-Ledger February 26, 2014, 6:15 AM]Howard Schwartz says his wife was a fantastically healthy woman who went running nearly every day and accompanied him on birding trips to 39 countries.
Last April, she had a minimally invasive hysterectomy to remove fibroid tumors that had become bothersome. Three months later, the 66-year-old Forked River woman had an abdominal tumor so large she looked pregnant. It was a Stage 4 malignant sarcoma.
Chemotherapy proved ineffective. She was hospitalized in October and died in December.
Now, in his grief, Schwartz copes with the realization the technique used in her surgery may have spread her cancer.
That technique is now being questioned by a Hooman Noorchashm, a Boston thoracic surgeon whose wife is battling the same type of cancer just months after her own hysterectomy.
The culprit, Noorchashm says, is "morcellation," or the power mincing of tissue before it is suctioned out of the body through a tiny tube. The technique is used in roughly 80,000 of the 600,000 hysterectomies performed annually, most for benign tumors called fibroids.
Normally, the surgery is uneventful. But if the fibroids were hiding a small malignancy, morcellation can sometimes splatter those cancer cells throughout the uterine cavity. In such cases, a Stage 1 cancer can instantly becomes Stage 4.
Noorchashm said he wants the procedure banned. A colleague's review of medical literature showed the risk was far greater than the 1-in-10,000 figure commonly referenced by doctors, he said. Instead, he said, it was more like 1-in-1,000, maybe even 1-in-400.
"If I told you a vaccine had a one-in-400 chance of killing you, would you take it? The FDA would pull it off the market," he said. Given morcellation's risk in the uterus, "you should never do it."
At this point, the medical field disagrees. The advantages of minimally invasive surgery with morcellation include shorter operating times and hospital stays, less chance of post-operative infections, less pain and faster recuperation. (Schwartz said his wife was back running a week after surgery.)
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists acknowledges morcellation can sometimes spread undetected cancer.
"Though the risk of this happening is not precisely known. ... it is extremely rare," says its policy statement.
It is not changing its clinical guidelines for now.
"No doctor wants to see his or her patient experience even the slightest harm, much less a devastating outcome," the ACOG statement said. It recommends more communication so the patient has all the necessary information to make a decision. (Schwartz's wife's surgeon did not respond to a request for a comment.)
Noorchashm's on-line petition lists five manufacturers of the morcellating device, including Ethicon, the Johnson & Johnson company headquartered in Somerville. (His wife's surgery used a morcellator from a different manufacturer.)
Ethicon, a Somerville-based division of J&J "is committed to patient safety and to providing physicians with appropriate information regarding the safe and effective use of our products," the company said in a statement.
"All Ethicon uterine morcellators have always included cautions in their instructions for use about the potential spread of malignant (or suspected malignant) tissue. While all pelvic surgeries carry risk, morcellation is considered to be a safe and effective treatment option for many patients."
Adrian Balica, director of minimally invasive surgery in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, said he was aware of the controversy, but would still offer morcellation as an option.
He said he performs 70 to 80 hysterectomies a year and has never had a case that progressed to Stage 4 cancer.
He said he tells patients about the risk morcellation poses — something the Boston surgeon says he believes most surgical gynecologists don't do. But in the past, Balica said, he's tended to spend more time explaining the more common side-effects of using the power-grinding tool. Those include bowel damage, and the risk small scraps of tissue left behind might continue to grow, meaning the fibroids would return.
He tells them the odds they have an undetected cancer morcellation could disperse are about one in 1,000.
"Most of the people tend to make the decision to proceed with the morcellation," he said.
Yet there are some patients on whom he will not perform morcellation — even if that's what they'd prefer. Those include post-menopausal women whose fibroids have suddenly taken a turn for the worse.
That's a red flag that a sarcoma may exist, he said, making those women poor candidates for morcellation.
Morcellation has been available to surgeons since the early 1990s, said Balica, and its use has been on the rise in the last decade, according to ACOG.
Uterine sarcomas are sneaky: nearly impossible to detect in the early stage, making them "occult," or hidden, Balica said. They usually can't be picked up by ultrasound, MRI, or even a biopsy.
"Fibroids don't change into sarcomas. Sarcomas grow where there are fibroids, and look like fibroids," he said. "There's no way to know they're there without taking out the uterus."
Balica feels morcellation shouldn't be banned, but the field should find a safer way to use the power tool. Inventions are underway that would allow the uterus to be bagged, then morcellated inside the bag so no pieces would land elsewhere.
That's an unconvincing argument for Noorschashm, now watching his 41-year-old wife, the mother of six, go through chemotherapy.
He said he spent about three weeks trying to make his point to fellow doctors, only to realize they were blind to the risk, or too entrenched in defending themselves from lawsuits.
Instead, he's gone public, and has been gratified by the reaction.
"Average people can see things that experts cannot," he said.
He has started a petition on change.org and has contacted reporters wherever he's heard of a morcellation death. He's badgered friends-of-friends-of-colleagues to get the attention of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Lancet, a British medical journal.
"I pulled every professional string I had," he said.
He and his wife, an anesthesiologist, haven't yet decided if they will sue. A lawsuit needs to prove treatment was "a breach of standard care." Ironically, he said, standard care was exactly what she received.
Family manages Sandy rebuild, daughter's medical needs with community help
[Posted by Erin O'Neill/The Star-Ledger February 24, 2014, 6:30 AM]LONG BRANCH — Chris Pirl's family faces more of a challenge than most in rebuilding from Hurricane Sandy.
The Point Pleasant Beach father of four's oldest daughter, Caitlin, was severely injured when she was hit by a drunk driver in 2008 as she was walking home.
She suffered a traumatic brain injury and is paralyzed, leaving the family with steep medical costs. Then Sandy hit, dumping 2 ½ feet of water inside the small home Pirl had renovated to accommodate his daughter. "It wrecked the entire house," said Chris Pirl.
Like many other Sandy victims along the Jersey Shore, Pirl said the flood insurance settlement they received wasn't enough to pay to repair their home, which has been demolished, let alone elevate the structure to conform to new federal flood regulations.
But with a tight-knit family and community support, the family is inching toward rebuilding.
"You can't imagine the support from the community. It's strangers. It's people who don't know us. It's people who knew and love (Caitlin)," said Mary Pirl, Caitlin's mother. "We're tremendously blessed to have a very close family, but we're so double blessed to have the people of the community always supporting us."
Sunday, the Pirls got another boost from the community as the Jay Dooley Memorial Foundation gathered about 30 people to join the Pier Village Four Mile Beach Run in Long Branch Sunday. Those participants, along with donations from dozens of other individuals, raised $10,000 for the family, said Jerry Dooley, the president of the Rumson-based foundation. The group is named after Dooley's son, who committed suicide at 29 in 2009 after struggling with depression and attention deficit disorder.
When Dooley heard about the Pirl family, he said he felt the foundation needed to help even though it veered a bit from the group's mission. The foundation has focused on providing health and educational services for children with special needs.
But, Dooley said, "It just seemed liked the right thing for us to do; to make an effort to see if we could help."
Caitlin, 25, watched from her wheelchair Sunday as dozens of people, including her father and two older brothers, walked and ran through the sand on the Long Branch beach, an activity she often participated in herself before the 2008 accident.
Though she couldn't join them, Caitlin said, "It's a wonderful view. It's nice being here and just looking at it."
She said she was overwhelmed by the generosity of the community supporting her family.
"It's unbelievable," she said. "That's very nice of them."
Chris Pirl said he had installed new ramps, widened doorways and made other renovations to his family's Point Pleasant Beach home to help Caitilin move around more easily.
"We probably put a little over $40,000 into the house not even two years before Sandy," he said.
The family's new home, which they are building with Shore 2 Recover, a Point Pleasant Beach-based disaster relief organization started after Sandy, "will be fitted for Caitlin," Pirl said.
He said he hopes to be able to move into the house by this summer, though the rough winter weather has put them behind schedule. The family has been staying in another Point Pleasant Beach home during construction.
Chris Pirl had been Caitlin's primary caregiver before Sandy, but because of the demands of rebuilding, his youngest daughter, Emily, has taken over many of those duties, including driving Caitlin to her many medical appointments.
Emily, 23, said returning home will provide the family with a sense of stability they haven't experienced in years.
"There was always something to work on but getting back into the house is going to be: now you can just live," she said.
"It's nice to get into a routine of — it sounds boring — but everyday life. It's something that we haven't really had for five years now."
Jersey Shore amusement park owners hope summer brings a revival
[Posted by Lisa Rose/The Star-Ledger February 23, 2014, 6:03 AM]Over the past few days, the sun has been making an increasing number of cameo appearances after a long siege of storms. Of course, this could just be an interlude, a brief tease of spring before the winter barrage continues.
For Hank Gehlhaus, the break in the weather is a window of opportunity. It looks like work crews can begin assembling a new looping roller coaster set for a spring debut at the Keansburg Amusement Park.
"It's faster than any coaster we've ever had," said Gehlhaus. "It's an Italian ride, and there's only three in the United States of this particular ilk. They have one down in South Jersey, and I've ridden it and it's smooth and fast and thrilling."
Gehlhaus, who co-owns the Keansburg Amusement Park with his brother, Bill, said snow has delayed the construction of the coiling steel colossus. It was purchased last year to replace the park's Wildcat coaster, which was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.
The Gehlhaus brothers said they aim to cut the ribbon shortly after the park reopens on April 12 for spring weekends. They're crunched for time but the siblings want to have the coaster ready to shuttle thrill-seekers early in the season. There's a thirst for normalcy at Shore amusement parks, from Keansburg to Wildwood, as spring approaches with a cocktail of hope and anxiety.
"After this long winter, people are going to be happy to come out," said Hank Gehlhaus. "I think it's going to be a fabulous year, if we get good weather. Last summer, we had some horrific weather. It was a horrible operating season, one that I still have nightmares over. Business was down 40 percent."
For all the hype about post-Sandy empowerment leading up to Memorial Day last year, the revival never took hold. The Shore, in all its blinking neon glory, was open for business, but the crowds didn't flock to the refurbished fun parks. Rain coupled with a flat economy made for a ghost world of vacant rides and dejected concessionaires.
'Really tough year'
This year, there are no exuberant jingles or flashy ad campaigns to greet the spring and tout the Shore's rebound. Amusement park owners are quietly prepping for another season, adding rides and revamping midways. There's minimal fanfare this time around, just a deep reserve of determination.
"We're all counting on not repeating last year," said Jack Morey, co-owner of Morey's Piers in Wildwood. "If you would have believed the media after the storm, there were going to be hundreds of thousands of people coming to the Wildwoods and it was going to be the best year ever. The truth is that it was a really tough year."
Traditionally, amusement parks kick off the spring with Easter egg hunts during the weekend of Palm Sunday, which falls on April 13 this year.
Jenkinson's Boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach will be back with one new attraction, a spinning ride called the Kite Flyer. Visitors lie flat in two-passenger compartments and soar with arms outstretched Superman-style.
"It's a fun ride that's for everyone," said Jenkinson's spokeswoman Toby Wolf. "It's not just for little kids, and it's not just a thrill ride. We're starting to get everything out of storage and hoping to get a bump from last year. On the gorgeous days, we were packed, but when the weather was iffy or the forecast was bad, it was a ghost town."
There will be new rides at the Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, the former home of the Jet Star roller coaster, which became a symbol of Sandy after the wood beneath it buckled and the structure plunged under the waves in one surreal piece.
Casino Pier is not promising the moon and the stars for summer 2014, just one new ride per month through the spring. The first is the Air Race, a flight simulator that whirls folks around in miniature planes.
"The rides that were up last year will be up, and we'll announce the new rides that will be up as well," said Casino Pier spokeswoman Maria Mastoris. "We'll have more rides than we had last year. That's all we can say right now."
The neighboring FunTown Pier in Seaside Park was savaged by the storm and what remained of it burned down last September in a boardwalk blaze. FunTown owner, Bill Major, said his goal is to bring back the park, but the project is in limbo as he submits plans to regulators.
"It's just an open beach now," said Major. "We are into the state for expansion so that we can expand the pier. The first step is they're going to put the boardwalk back in front of the pier, and we're planning to start building. Whether it starts this year or next year, I don't know."
Ready to rock
Morey's Piers is introducing a new wave swinger, an update of a twirling carnival classic adorned with paintings of the Wildwood boardwalk. They are also renaming one of their piers. The Adventure Pier, a span of monster coasters and other high adrenaline attractions, is being rebranded as the Pier that Rocks. There's a concert stage and a radio studio to complement the big rides with loud rock. Morey said he wants to reinvent the pier for a new audience.
"It has this experimental edge," said Morey. "We have an art box project that is built out of shipping containers. We'll have music students from the School of Rock performing. It will be a place to see these kids who are up-and-coming musicians. Wildwood used to be an experimental music place. That's waned a bit, and we want to bring it back. When you look at the essence of Wildwood in the past, the doo-wop hotels or music or amusement rides, there was always this experimental nature."
The amusement park that's undergone the most radical post-Sandy makeover is Playland's Castaway Cove in Ocean City. They introduced seven new rides last year, and the summer 2014 collection includes two upgrades and one newbie.
"We knew last year wasn't going to be great after Hurricane Sandy, but with the good interest rates, it just made sense to invest in new rides," said Brian Hartley, vice president of Castaway Cove. "There's a lot of people that didn't come last year that will come this year that will see the seven new rides and see them as new for this year."
Going to extremes
An extreme ride from Europe called Tropical Storm made its American debut last summer at Castaway Cove and was featured on the Travel Channel series, "Ride-iculous." It's like the Gravitron on steroids, hoisting riders in the air on a mechanical arm and whirling them vertically.
"It goes up 50 feet on a 70-degree angle and the giant arm rotates but it also has a disc that rotates counter to that arm," said Hartley. "We saw it at a trade show in November of 2012, and the fact that nobody else in the United States had it, we felt it was a great match for us."
Looming over all the reconstruction at amusement parks is the prospect of the Jersey Shore being home to the country's second-largest Ferris wheel. The 225-foot ride, with 40 climate-controlled gondolas, was scheduled to open at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City last month, but construction has yet to begin. Pier co-owner Anthony Catanoso said the project was in limbo for months as he awaited approval to build an expansion for the year-round observation wheel.
"It took us some time to negotiate the leasehold with the city," said Catanoso. "We couldn't move forward until that lease was signed. We're hoping for a New Year's Eve opening. We're hoping the structure will start going up some time in October."
It looks like the Shore's dream wheel won't start spinning until folks are singing "Auld Lang Syne" to welcome 2015. Still, Catanoso said the pier could still thrive this summer because there's plenty to do at the park with or without a wheel. The pier has 25 rides, from a kiddie tugboat cruise to a soaring Slingshot for daredevils.
"We rely on the cabin fever theory during winters like this," said Catanoso. "There's no telling because you can be pent up all winter, and if you don't have the money to do things, it's going to be a problem."
Keansburg is getting a boost before it opens for the season. A Sandy-damaged car from the park's haunted house is going to be fixed up during an episode of "American Restoration" on the History Channel. The episode airs on Tuesday at 10 p.m.
"Our Spook House car made it out to Las Vegas and it was redone," said Gehlhaus.
The Keansburg Spook House is a pioneering dark ride that dates back to the Great Depression. The vintage Gothic lair, a landmark for amusement park connoisseurs, is slated to reopen this summer after extensive repairs.
"We're doing a major overhaul on the Spook House right now," said Gehlhaus. "It's the oldest one in America, and this summer, we're going to be in the spook house business again."
Chris Christie's lawyer for bridge scandal withdraws as Port Authority's counsel in separate lawsuit
[Posted by Jason Grant/The Star-Ledger February 22, 2014, 7:36 AM]In an unexpected move, the lawyer for Gov. Chris Christie's office in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal withdrew this week as counsel to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in an ongoing federal lawsuit, setting off speculation about what it means and why he did it.
Randy Mastro, a high-powered litigation partner in the Manhattan offices of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, represents the governor's office in the bridge scandal and other controversies tied to Hurricane Sandy aid. At the same time, he had served for more than a year as a lead attorney for the Port Authority in a federal lawsuit focused on controversial toll hikes.
In recent weeks, some attorneys and legal observers had expressed concern about Mastro's dual role, especially because Mastro's duties for Christie include assisting with an internal review of the governor's office's actions linked to lane closures at the bridge — which is controlled by the Port Authority — and communications about the lane closures that Christie's office had with Port Authority officials.
Christie hired Mastro in January after emails showed that an aide to Christie allegedly helped orchestrate a four-day closure of two local-access lanes to the bridge, causing massive traffic jams in Fort Lee. Many suspect the closures were retaliation after the borough's Democratic mayor didn't endorse the Republican governor for re-election.
On Wednesday, Mastro quietly withdrew as counsel to the Port Authority in the ongoing lawsuit brought in federal court in Manhattan by the New York and North Jersey chapters of the AAA. The suit aims to block toll increases at six bistate bridges and tunnels, contending that the Port Authority violated federal law by imposing toll hikes as part of a plan to finance certain capital projects unrelated to transportation.
Mastro declined comment Friday. In mid-January, he told the Wall Street Journal through a spokesperson that there was no conflict of interest in his "firm's separate representation of the Port Authority and the governor's office in these separate matters."
Despite Mastro's withdrawing from the AAA lawsuit, other lawyers from Gibson Dunn remain very much involved in the suit.
Some New Jersey lawyers say Mastro's withdrawal amounts to an "optics" move only. His international firm, with offices on Park Avenue in Manhattan, is still collecting hefty legal fees from the Port Authority in the case and maintaining an important privileged attorney-client relationship with the agency.
"You can't wear two hats here," said Miles Feinstein, a 40-year defense lawyer based in Clifton. "Remember, the internal investigation into the bridge scandal is centering on the Port Authority. So if you're representing the authority in the lawsuit, and you have an attorney-client relationship with that party, how can you be investigating that agency at the same time?"
Still, other legal experts, such as Stanley Brand, a nationally known political corruption lawyer, do not see the potential conflict — "at least not yet," said Brand.
"The Port Authority is not the governor," Brand said Friday evening in a telephone interview. "I understand that the optics do not look great, with Mastro's firm representing both the governor's office and Port Authority. But I don't know that there is a violation" of the ethical rules.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for David Wildstein — a former Port Authority official who helped institute the lane closures — expressed concerns about Mastro's firm's role in the federal lawsuit between AAA and the Port Authority. "I have concerns about whether Mastro and his law firm can properly represent the office of the governor, having already been representing the Port Authority in litigation that puts two distinct entities — the governor's office and the Port— potentially at odds," said Alan Zegas, the lawyer, before adding, "I do not see how the conflict is resolved by Mastro's withdrawal.
"There is a serious question as to whether Mastro can represent either the governor's office or the Port Authority any longer."
Mastro is the handpicked lawyer for Christie's office in the George Washington Bridge and related scandals. Known as a high-powered, aggressive New York litigator, in the 1990s he reportedly wielded a baseball bat during meetings to help him make his points while serving as a chief of staff and then deputy mayor under New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Many lawyers and observers consider his role to be crucial to how the scandals will play out. Already Mastro has sent out letters requesting his own interviews with key players and potential targets in the scandals, including Wildstein and Bridget Anne Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to Christie.
In emails turned over to the state Legislature, Kelly is shown helping to direct the closing of access lanes at the bridge. "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," she wrote to Wildstein in August. Wildstein's reply: "Got it."
• Timeline of Port Authority's George Washington Bridge controversy
• Complete coverage of bridge scandal


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In Ghosts you take control of the Akadian forces in a campaign to crush Tucker and the Federation. Play through ten campaign levels and one bonus level with three difficulty settings. You'll get access to the fearsome Akadian Spider Tanks and Stealth Tanks in this action-packed turn-based strategy game.
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