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The Port Authority has spent almost $100 million since 2003 to subsidize elite New York City cultural institutions and real-estate developments projects that strayed from the bi-state agency's mission to improve transportation in the region.
Much of the money came from New Jersey toll payers and PATH riders, but it went to dance studios and an expensive venue for jazz on Manhattan's West Side, a parking garage that may be used by luxury condominium owners in Brooklyn and the renovation of a former nightclub into a Broadway theater.
The payments were administered by the Empire State Development Corp., whose former chairman, Charles A. Gargano, simultaneously served as vice chairman of the Port Authority. The money was included in a special fund solely controlled by Gargano's boss, former New York Gov. George E. Pataki.
Gargano said the projects helped boost the economy and tourism in the port district, which includes all or part of nine New Jersey counties and eight New York counties. But former authority employees and scholars and even the authority's own top spokesman said investments in cultural groups did not square with its core mission to improve regional transportation and even went beyond the agency's license to promote economic development.
"A lot of the projects that have been funded should not have been funded," said Louis J. Gambaccini, a former assistant executive director of the Port Authority and a former New Jersey transportation commissioner.
"They are falling into a very common political trap," Gambaccini said, adding that such projects could be helpful in the short term but dilute the authority's ability to carry out "mega-projects" that improve regional transportation.
Stephen Sigmund, the authority's chief spokesman, also said the grants did not fit the agency's mission.
"They were a product of a bad political deal," Sigmund said. "It has led to spending in some places that arguably is not the mission of the PA."
The authority did not publicly disclose the list of projects, provoking criticism from lawmakers. The authority's 2007 budget, which the agency's leaders praised for its transparency, listed only a single number for each special fund its total budget.
"This is done in secret," said Richard L. Brodsky, the chairman of the New York State Assembly's Committee on Corporations, Authorities...