N.J. Lawmakers to Force Answers From Christie Appointee Baroni
By Elise Young Feb 14, 2014 10:22 AM ET
New Jersey lawmakers investigating intentional gridlock at the George Washington Bridge are preparing to compel testimony from Bill Baroni, an appointee of Governor Chris Christie, who previously told them the cause was a traffic study.
“Mr. Baroni was the person who delivered the quote, story, unquote to the assembly transportation committee about the so-called traffic study,” Democratic Senator Loretta Weinberg, co-chairwoman of a special legislative investigatory panel, said today by telephone. “We have a particular interest in talking to him.”
Weinberg said the 12-member panel,with Democratic and Republican members from the New Jersey Senate and Assembly, would prepare a subpoena for Baroni’s testimony, though she wasn’t certain when it would be served.
A message left at the Roseland, New Jersey, office of Baroni’s lawyer, Michael Himmel, wasn’t immediately returned.
Baroni, 42, a former Republican state senator whom Christie made his top appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the bridge, told lawmakers in Trenton on Nov. 25 that lanes were closed for an evaluation of traffic flow in Fort Lee. The authority has yet to produce such a study, and e-mails obtained in January show the four days of tie-ups in September were arranged a month earlier by a Christie deputy chief of staff and a Port Authority executive.
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