Extended efforts by public interest advocates to get a copy of the Port Authority annual budget and multi-year capital plan in late May and June resulted in another Catch-22 scenario like the one Campaign staff members encountered several years ago when trying to learn the contents of a PA board meeting agenda (MTR #163).

The PA has released a 20-page summary of its annual budget. But requests for a copy of the full budget were met with an extended series of phone calls routed and re-routed between the PA's media and financial offices, then two weeks of inaction and silence. More calls resulted in the PA's budget office declaring that the 20-page summary is the budget, at least as far as the public is concerned. They say that there are more details in the PA's 2001-2005 capital plan, but that is a "work in progress" and won't be available for months.

Port Authority staffers did volunteer verbally that the PA's current budget contains no money for investment in cross-harbor rail car float barges (contradicting constant protestations by PA leadership) and that there is $1.5 million for "further study" of the Goethals Twin Bridge. This funding, however, cannot be committed without a PA board resolution.

But try getting that in writing.