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| Image: crainsnewyork.com |
For those of you who don't live in the metropolitan New York area, let me provide some brief backstory on a curious bi-state governmental creature known as the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PA). Just about everyone in the region calls the entity the "Port Authority." It runs the airports, bus terminals, Hudson River crossings, PATH train system, and docks in New York, Newark, and Elizabeth. The PA makes more money than God; its bond ratings are characteristically the highest available in the business.
The Port Authority is also a profoundly political entity, with a board typically consisting of regional, deep pocketed power brokers. There are few policy accidents among these well-connected board members, the PA's well-paid, entrenched bureaucracy, and the political parties that thrive on Port Authority business.
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Guy Tozzoli
(Image: businesswire.com) |
According to an Associated Press story picked up by Fox News, the PA had something of a fire sale in 1986 on the right to the name "World Trade Center." (The original article on this subject appeared some months ago in the northern New Jersey newspaper The Record.) The Port Authority sold the name for ten American dollars. (The story did not state whether the transaction was all cash, check, or billed to the buyer on 30-day payment terms.)
The buyer, though, wasn't just anyone off the street. That would, to understate the case, not be the Port Authority way. The purchaser was a nonprofit called "The World Trade Centers Organization (WCTA)." The nonprofit's
capo was one
Guy Tozzoli, who happened to be a Port Authority executive who was leaving the PA. Of course, the deal was a license to print money. Just how much is now the subject of a nationwide investigation by New York State's attorney general.
One intriguing aspect of
l'affaire Tozzoli is its timing. Mr. Tozzoli died in February, 2013.
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