‘I’m truly in love with this crane.” So spoke Gov. Cuomo while welcoming the arrival of the Left Coast Lifter to the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project.
Its use, he said, will save the state “over a billion dollars” on the project’s final cost. So what exactly will that cost be? Said Cuomo: “We won’t have the information for months and months and months.”
How about a hint? E.g., how much higher will tolls on the new bridge be? Well, said the governor, “you need to know how much the bridge is going to cost before you know what the tolls are going to cost.”
The governor says he won’t know the final cost until he gets “a little bit more specific information,” given that construction won’t end until 2018.
But it was more than two years ago that he promised to “soon” appoint a task force to figure out how to pay the bill. He still hasn’t done so. Point is, we’re not going to have any answers until long after Election Day.
Meanwhile, GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino says he would use the state’s $4.2 billion from legal settlements to fund the bridge — a sensible and straightforward use of a windfall. The governor prefers mystery.
None of this surprises. After all, the governor seems determined not to tell New Yorkers anything about his plans, should he win a second term. Why should the Tappan Zee be any different?