“The Powerbroker” Operates Inside the Christie DEP Too

Wolff & Samson at the heart of multiple expanding scandals

Bill Wolfe, the head of NJ-PEER, an environmental group that has monitored NJ Transit, is critical of the deals for lacking “competitive bidding, transparency, and robust ethical restrictions, which are particularly important given the many real estate and development interests among Wolff & Samson clients.” ~~~ WNYC (2/11/14)

Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize winning work The Powerbroker – Robert Moses and the Fall of New York is one of my favorite books. Caro exhaustively details the history of Moses’ rise to power and how the exercise of that power shaped the development of the entire metropolitan region. It is a must read for anyone with an interest in politics, regional planning, and urban development.

In that vein, we are beginning to see a faint – but building echo – emerge of a current day Moses: Port Authority Chairman and Gov. Christie crony David Samson, head of the law firm Wolff and Samson.

In fact, Andrea Bernstein of WNYC, who is doing outstanding journalism, explicitly invoked the Moses legacy in her Tuesday story on how David Samson worked inside deals at NJ Transit to benefit his real estate and development clients, see:

The Power Broker: How Christie’s Port Point Man Plays All Sides of Transit Deals

Bernstein followed that up today with another hard hitting story about how Wolff & Samson were involved in a NJ Transit commitment to build a light rail station in Hoboken to benefit their client, the Rockefeller Development people, see:

Documents Reveal Insider Deal to Build Light Rail Station in Hoboken

And prior to that, Bernstein broke the Christie political strategy to use the Port Authority and his Crony David Samson to craft a cover story to kill the ARC tunnel, divert hundreds of millions of dollars of Port Authority capital investment funds to NJ, and avoid a politically unpopular gas tax increase required to replenish the tapped out NJ Transportation Trust Fund, see:

How Christie’s Men Turned the Port Authority into a Political Piggy Bank

This is brilliant work, and it begins building the case for David Samson as the modern day Bob Moses.

But there are a lot more shoes to drop, as the focus on Samson expands from transportation projects to other lobbying work, particularly at DEP.

I have written several posts in an attempt to get the attention of mainstream reporters and editors with respect to what Wolff & Samson are doing on the inside of DEP and in representing clients with various DEP and other regulatory approvals.

In those posts, I lay out the specific policy and regulatory issues, explain the role of Wolff & Samson (naming lobbyists names and projects, backed by links to ELEC records), and suggest the economic benefits and implications of W&S inside influence on the regulatory process, see: