In another reminder of Andrew Cuomo’s excesses, the New York Power Authority is doing a quiet fire sale to recoup a fraction of the nine figures it spent on special bridge lighting at the then-gov’s behest.
Yes, the vast light displays Cuomo envisioned would have looked cool, but nobody else across New York government thought it worth the expense and trouble — so the scheme aborted after a host of scandals forced the gov from office.
Cuomo had used his power to push the Power Authority into financing the “investment”; it’s since been stuck also paying some $300,000 a year in storage costs, bringing to the total tab of the bridge-light project to $108 million.
And now it’s belatedly auctioning off the lights, hoping it can at least recover a few pennies on the dollar.
Stuck covering the loss (as they must also pay for many of the impossible green-energy schemes Cuomo mandated in pursuit of his national ambitions) are the Power Authority’s long-suffering customers.
This was hardly the only Cuomo vanity project; he “gave” (you paid) New York a $15 million “film hub” that the state wound up selling off for $1; a $90 million lightbulb factory that never opened; $30 million in Andrew-designed tunnel-tile mosaics, plans for a pointless $2 billion AirTrain and so much more.
His host of “AndyLand” projects burned at least $10 billion in taxpayer money.
Remarkably, the ex-gov is not the very worst candidate for mayor this year, but that’s still no reason for anyone to hail him as the city’s savior.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
