SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 9/23/2019
For residents of Fort Lee, New Jersey, the first day of school in September 2013 was a memorable one – and not in a good way. The traffic patterns on the George Washington Bridge, which crosses the Hudson River into New York at Fort Lee, had been abruptly altered, so that only one lane (instead of the normal three) was reserved for drivers accessing the bridge from Fort Lee. Gridlock ensued, with commuters and school buses on the streets of Fort Lee delayed for hours. In one case, paramedics responding to a 911 call had to get out of their ambulance and walk. It was later revealed that the decision to change the lanes had been made to retaliate against Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, after he declined to endorse then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was up for re-election in 2013. The move was a piece of political payback; this winter, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument on whether it was also a federal crime.
The George Washington Bridge – the busiest bridge in the world – is operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a joint venture between the two states that receives significant support from the federal government. On the bridge’s upper deck, there are 12 toll lanes going from New Jersey into New York. Under a decades-old arrangement, three of those 12 lanes have been separated from the others during the morning rush hour with traffic cones to allow local traffic from Fort Lee to cross the bridge more easily.
But when Sokolich refused to endorse Christie, David Wildstein – a Port Authority staffer who effectively served as the chief of staff to William Baroni, whom Christie had named as the deputy executive director of the Port Authority – told Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff, that the Port Authority could “close down those Fort Lee lanes†on the bridge “to put some pressure†on Sokolich. Kelly responded in an email: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.†To justify the change to the traffic patterns, Wildstein, Baroni and Kelly falsely told Port Authority employees that they were conducting a traffic study. The trio also agreed to deviate from normal protocol and give only last-minute notice of the lane closures. The new traffic patterns also came at a cost to the Port Authority itself, which had to pay approximately $5400 to have an extra toll collector standing by and for traffic engineers to carry out the phony traffic study.
more:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/09/symposium-bridgegate-scandal-comes-to-the-court/#more-289247
