New Port Authority conflict issue emerges: NJ Transit got $1 lease while a client of David Samson's law firm
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 19, 2014, 1:36 PM
BY SHAWN BOBURG
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
Port Authority Chairman David Samson, embroiled in controversies over whether clients of his law firm benefited from his public position, voted to give another client – NJ Transit –
a $1-per-year lease on a valuable park-and-ride lot in North Bergen, records show.
At the time of the Feb. 9, 2012, vote, Samson’s firm, Wolff & Samson, was getting up to $1.5 million to advise NJ Transit on how to maximize profits from dozens of its commuter lots, including the one in North Bergen, according to public documents.
The 49-year lease for the commuter lot near Route 495 means the Port Authority will collect millions less in revenues — NJ Transit previously paid the authority $900,000 a year for use of the lot, which is used by hundreds of commuters each day.
Samson has become a central figure in the controversies arising out of the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal. News of his vote comes as the Port Authority’s board is poised to cast critical votes today on its long-term capital and operating budgets. A spokeswoman for Samson said he will recuse himself from both budgets, which set the basic agendas of the agency’s day-to-day operations as well as projects it wants to pursue over the next decade. Samson’s personal spokeswoman, who is not affiliated with the Port Authority, did not explain why he would not vote.
This is the third time this year that Samson, who was appointed by Governor Christie, has come under scrutiny for overlapping interests related to his law firm, which also has contracts with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.
“It seems like the tentacles of Wolff & Samson have infiltrated so many aspects of the public transportation system in New Jersey,” said political science professor Brigid Harrison of Montclair State University. “These questionable practices keep repeating themselves. What otherwise might seem like isolated incidents of bad judgment and individual conflicts of interest are creating a pattern in which Wolff Samson, and David Samson, are essentially exercising very broad authority across the state to benefit their firm and their private clients.”
A spokeswoman for Samson did not provide answers to questions sent late Wednesday afternoon.
Samson also voted for a $256 million reconstruction of the rundown PATH station in Harrison three months after a builder represented by his law firm proposed converting a nearby warehouse into hundreds of luxury apartments, The Record reported last month. And his firm is at the center of allegations by the Hoboken mayor, Dawn Zimmer, that the Christie administration threatened to withhold Superstorm Sandy recovery money from her city if she did not approve a real estate development represented at the time by Samson’s firm. A $75,000 Port Authority-funded land-use study was favorable to Samson’s former client, The Rockefeller Group. It’s unclear if Samson had any involvement in the land-use study, and the Christie administration has denied Zimmer’s claims. Rockefeller cut ties with Wolff & Samson as the controversy unfolded.
At least two former high-ranking Christie administration officials now work as attorneys in Samson’s law firm. And the firm has seen an uptick in public-contract dollars since Christie took office in 2010, making close to $5 million from state, county and local governments in 2012, records show.
In September 2010, Wolff & Samson was hired by NJ Transit — at an estimated cost of $650,000 — as special counsel for an initiative to privatize the mass transit agency’s parking lots. The idea was to turn over operation of NJ Transit’s parking lots to private companies. In turn, those companies pay NJ Transit for the right to operate the sites, presumably resulting in a net gain for the transit agency and potentially higher rates for users.
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