NY auctions off unused decorative lights in $100 million Cuomo boondoggle

Yahoo

19 hours ago

The lights have finally gone out on this project.
In an extraordinary fire sale, the state Power Authority is auctioning off a huge storehouse of unused decorative bridge lights — which were supposed to be part of a $106 million project to brighten up the city's spans by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but which never got installed.
With a minimum bid of just $25, the lights are only expected to fetch pennies on the dollar — and leave the state out a massive amount of cash for the failed lighting project, officials told The Post of the sale, which was was first reported by Politico.
Cuomo announced the 'New York Harbor Crossings Project' in 2017, which was supposed to slap multi-colored light fixtures on all nine MTA bridges and tunnels, along with the Port Authority's Hudson River crossings and the Thruway Authority's Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.
Critics lampooned the decorative lighting show as an unnecessary vanity project, at a time when breakdowns in transit service caused what was dubbed 'the summer of hell.'
Facing outrage over a declining subway service, Cuomo suspended the bridge lights program after buying $106 million worth of the lights and equipment, putting them in storage.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York.
The bulbs have been gathering dust in storage for eight years after Cuomo promised the harbor light show would 'blow people away.'
NYPA has paid about $300,000 a year in storage costs, bringing to the total tab of the bridge light project to $108 million.
The unused lights became an orphan, after Cuomo resigned as governor amid sexual misconduct accusations he denies. MTA senior management, which had more pressing problems, wanted nothing to do with the light show.
'We have tried to repurpose these lights. Despite these efforts to identify new uses across the state, demand was not what was expected, so the next logical step is to auction the lights,' said NYPA spokeswoman Linday Kryzak.
Transit advocates and government watchdogs said the light show boondoggle calls into question the claims by Cuomo and his backers that he's a good manager.
'Andrew Cuomo can talk about building big stuff but he's noted for boondoggles that allowed transit service for millions of people to slide toward a cliff,' said Danny Pearlstein, spokesman for the NYC Riders Alliance.
It's not the only arguably wasteful project pushed by Cuomo.
As The Post reported, he also ordered the MTA to burn as much as $30 million to retile two city tunnels — the Brooklyn Battery and Queens Midtown — in the state's blue-and-gold color scheme, instead of using the dough for desperately needed subway repairs. The agency originally ordered white tiles.
'This is a guy whose supporters tell us is a management genius. This bridge light project was a boondoggle, debacle and fiasco rolled into one,' said John Kaehny, executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany.
'Cuomo stuck taxpayers with this gigantic bill. It was government by ego, by whimSometimes you make mistakes when managing during a crisis. This was premeditated mismanagement,' he said.
Cuomo's campaign declined to comment.
Gov. Kathy Hochul — who was lieutenant governor at the time — also declined to comment.