David Samson pleads; Ex-NJDOT chief Jamie Fox charged

David Samson, a longtime confidant of Governor Christie, pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges of using his former position as chairman of the Port Authority to pressure United Airlines to reinstate a flight to South Carolina, where he had a weekend home.

The Record’s Paul Berger and peter Sampson report:

Prosecutors also filed a criminal complaint against former state Transportation Commissioner Jamie Fox — who was appointed by Christie — charging him with conspiring with Samson and others in the bribery scheme that induced United to reinstate the flight.


United officials have not been charged, but the
airline must pay $2.25 million in fines and cooperate with the investigation of Fox, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said.

Standing in a packed courtroom at the federal court house in Newark, Samson admitted his involvement in the scheme to U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares.

Under the terms of a plea deal, Samson could be sentenced to a term ranging from probation to up to two years in prison. Sentencing was set for Oct. 20.

Samson, who will turn 77 next month, pleaded guilty to one count of knowingly and corruptly soliciting and accepting a thing of value, specifically a non-stop flight to flight to South Carolina, intending to be influenced or rewarded in his official position as chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

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During questioning by the judge, Samson admitted that as chairman he had authority over the agency’s agenda and used this power to pressure United to reinstate a South Carolina flight that had previously been operated by Continental Airlines before it was merged with United.


Samson admitted discussing the flight with a consultant and senior United employees at a dinner meeting in New York City in 2011, at which he let it be known that the route had made travel to his home in South Carolina much more convenient before it was cancelled.

Fox was a principal of a New Jersey consulting and lobbying firm that had been retained by United Continental Holdings Inc., to assist it in matters involving the Port Authority, according to the charges.

Later, after learning that United was not interested in reinstating the flight, Samson admitted he pulled a hanger project off the agency’s agenda to pressure United.

Fox is accused of conspiring with Samson in a scheme to threaten to use Samson’s position to stall United’s plans to lease space at Newark airport for a maintenance hanger in a bid to pressure the airline into reinstate a twice-weekly flight to South Carolina for Samson’s benefit.


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Did you think the DNC runs on policy and purpose alone?


Sure, many attendees at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia will be very busy working on national and state policy, making and renewing connections, back slapping, back stabbing, and rooting on the speakers. 


But this is a convention after all. All that hard work can leave a guy or gal tired, thirsty and looking for a little pick-me-up. 


Recognizing a civic need when they see one, Pennsylvania lawmakers this week voted to provide assistance to conventioneers still tired and thirsty after the city’s normal bar-closing hour of 2 a.m.  


BillyPenn has the details. 

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Largest ship ever to dock in NJ is a sign of the future

The largest ship ever to call at the Port of New York and New Jersey docked this week after sailing from China through the newly widened Panama Canal.


Paul Berger reports for The Record: 
The arrival of the MOL Benefactor at Bayonne’s Global Container
Terminals marks the beginning of what promises to be a succession of
progressively larger ships calling at the busiest port on the East Coast.


Standing on the dock Friday with the ship looming behind him, Global’s president, John Atkins, said larger ships are more efficient, making goods cheaper and marking “a win for the consumer, for business owners and our local economy.”

Bethann Rooney, assistant director of port commerce for the Port Authority, said: “Whether you are buying a car or going to Wal-Mart or Home Depot this weekend, there are costs passed on to the consumer for shipping.”

The new Panama Canal opened June 26, offering passage to ships able to carry more than twice as many containers as before. The arrival of these super ships in the New York area is crucial for container ports along the East Coast as well as for the businesses and consumers who rely upon them.

But the port faces major challenges to accommodate its new oversized visitors, which measure up to 1,200 feet long and 160 feet wide.

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The bi-state agency has invested $6 billion dredging harbor channels, expanding roadways and adding rail capacity to accommodate these enormous vessels and their cargo. Terminal operators like Global have invested hundreds of millions of dollars more in special cranes and other dockside facilities.

But because of delays to the $1.3 billion project to raise the Bayonne Bridge, which spans the waterway between Bayonne and Staten Island, the new class of ships still cannot reach two of the port’s major container terminals at Newark and Elizabeth.

Shipping companies won’t send their largest ships to the Eastern seaboard unless they can call at New York and New Jersey, which lies within 250 miles of 15 percent of the U.S. population, said Walter Kemmsies an economist and ports expert at investment management company Jones Lang LaSalle.


“New York is the must-call port,” Kemmsies said.

Following the widening of the canal, Maersk Line, a leading global shipping company with offices in Madison, hopes to expand its Asia to U.S. East Coast routes. But a spokeswoman said that because Maersk uses terminals at Newark and Elizabeth the company will wait until the Bayonne Bridge has been raised before beginning those services.

Currently, some smaller ships sail within feet of the bridge roadway. The Port Authority project to raise the roadway from 151 to 215 feet should have been completed around now. But it has been delayed by more than one year and is currently estimated to be ready in late 2017, missing the shipping industry’s third-quarter peak season when stores stock up for the holidays.

A longer-term concern is whether the port can cope with the large number of trucks needed to service the thousands of additional containers delivered by each ship. The average ship calling at the port last year had a capacity of about 3,000 containers. The MOL Benefactor’s capacity is about 6,000.

In the coming years, the port expects to welcome ships too big even for the widened Panama Canal — they will come through the Suez Canal — with a capacity of between 8,200 and 10,500 containers.

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NJ GOP icon, Tom Kean, is skipping Trump’s convention

   Gov. Thomas Kean giving the keynote address at the 1988 GOP convention.

He is widely regarded by Republicans and Democrats as a bipartisan unifier and one of America’s most respected moderate voices on race, education, the economy and terrorism. But, for the first time in 52 years, former Gov. Tom Kean is skipping the Republican National Convention.

Mike Kelly reports today in The Record:

Kean said he harbored too many differences with the immigration and economic policies of the presumptive GOP nominee for president – Donald Trump.


Kean joins other Republican luminaries, like former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney and former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman, who are skipping the four-day GOP fest next week in Cleveland.

But Kean’s absence is particularly significant. He was often seen as someone who could find common ground with all factions.

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In an interview in which he reflected on his half-century in GOP politics, Kean, who won praise in 2004 for his evenhanded chairmanship of the 9/11 Commission and is cited in polls as New Jersey’s most popular governor, said he was so disillusioned with Trump and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, that he might not vote for president.


Kean, 81, said that he had met Trump and Clinton over the years and that he liked them personally. But as politicians, he said, he finds both lacking.

He views Trump as a loose cannon who should “listen to people and stop tweeting at 11 o’clock at night.” He says Clinton has a “good heart,” but is “so contrived that it comes across as phony.”

“I’d like to support the nominee of my party but I really don’t know,” Kean said, in an hour-long phone call from his office in Far Hills. “If it comes to the point where you disagree on too many issues, you can’t vote for him.”

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Highlands development critics step up attack on NJDEP

Proposal would quadruple number of septic systems in forested areas of region, which serves as water supply for some 5 million people.

Jon Hurdle reports for NJ Spotlight:

Critics of Christie administration plans to increase the density of residential development in the New Jersey Highlands believe the administration purposely made it difficult for opponents of the plan to get their objections on record by holding only one public hearing on the matter and scheduling it for 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

Thus, about 25 individuals and representatives of environmental groups held their own hearing last night at Montclair State University, expressing their intense opposition and urging the Department of Environmental Protection to withdraw a proposed rule change that would implement the plan.
The group plans to transcribe the comments and submit them before the comment period is over. Elliott Ruga, policy director of the New Jersey Highlands Coalition, said legitimate comments must be answered by the DEP issue by issue.
Speakers assailed the DEP’s plan, which would almost quadruple the number of septic systems allowed in the forested acres of the Highlands, and increase their number by about 50 percent in the region’s unforested areas.
Critics said the proposal, published by the DEP in May, would hurt water quality for the approximately 5 million people that depend on the Highlands for water supply; would open up the protected natural area to developers; and would represent an abandonment of the legislative intent of the 2004 Highlands Act, which protects the area.

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Speakers accused the Christie administration of giving in to pressure from developers and of ignoring the need for clean water for a majority of the state’s population. Organizers of Monday’s event including the New Jersey Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, and the New Jersey Highlands Coalition.
George Cassa, a resident of Tewksbury, and president of the Coalition, accused Gov. Chris Christie of using the proposed rule change to undermine a law that he doesn’t like.
“This is a seemingly coordinated attempt by the administration to pull the Highlands Act apart, board by board,” Cassa said. “He has been relentless in his willingness to abuse the power of his office in the form of DEP.
“As governor, he took an oath of office to uphold the laws of the state of New Jersey, and that oath of office does not allow him to distinguish between the ones he likes and the ones he doesn’t like, said Cassa, 69, who runs a fly-fishing business. “I don’t believe he has any authority at all to end-run the legislature by instructing his executive branch appointees to work in direct contravention of legislative intent.”
DEP Commissioner Bob Martin has defended the rule as a “common sense, science-based approach” to protecting water while creating “reasonable opportunities” for economic growth and jobs.

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Ex-engineering exec draws jail term for pay-to-play role

A top executive of the politically connected engineering firm toppled by an investigation into illegal campaign contributions will serve nine months in a county jail for his role in the scheme, authorities said.
S.P. Sullivan reports for NJ.com:

Former Birdsall Services Group senior vice president William Birdsall, 67, is also barred for 10 years from bidding on public contracts in New Jersey after admitting to circumventing the state’s pay-to-play laws, according to the state Attorney General’s Office.
Birdsall, of Manchester, is the brother of the firm’s former CEO

William Birdsall

Howard Birdsall, who received a four-year sentence for the scheme.

The Monmouth County firm folded in 2013 after investigators found the Birdsalls and their employees were reimbursed by the company for donations they made individually to New Jersey politicians, in violation of the state’s pay-to-play laws.
Company records obtained by The Star-Ledger that year showed that hundreds of politicians, from mayors and freeholders to major state power brokers, received money from the firm. Those donations came in the form of personal checks from shareholders and firm employees, who were reimbursed through bonus payments and other means, authorities said.
In a statement Monday, acting Attorney General Christopher Porrino said the company “secured millions of dollars in public contracts for which they should have been disqualified, stacking the deck in their favor in exactly the way the law was intended to prevent.”
William Birdsall was also ordered to pay the state $129,115 — the total amount of money he personally donated on behalf of the company — along with a $75,000 public corruption profiteering penalty, authorities said.
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