Newark – Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) today made the following comments at a meeting of the current Gateway Board prior to the signing of the Gateway bill she sponsored by Governors Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Andrew Cuomo of New York:

“One month ago, after weeks of very difficult negotiations, the Legislatures in New Jersey and New York passed legislation setting up a new Gateway Development Commission to oversee what is expected to be the largest mass transit project in our nation’s history.

“The new law for the first time will require New York and New Jersey to pay equally for the local share of construction of the Gateway tunnels and the new Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River.

“At the insistence of New York Assembly Authorities Chair Amy Paulin – and with my full support – it defines Gateway broadly to include the ‘Phase 2’ construction of New York Penn Station South and other projects needed to expand NJ Transit rail capacity to Manhattan.

“It establishes requirements for open public meetings and open public records, creates conflict-of-interest standards and whistleblower protections, and sets public hearing requirements.

“It gives the Governors of New Jersey and New York the same power to veto minutes of the new commission that they have over the Port Authority as well as other state and bi-state agencies, requiring them to share responsibility for the commission’s actions.

“Most important, it requires New York and New Jersey each to pay 50% of the local share for the tunnels and sharply limits the ability of the commission to impose “user fees” – meaning tolls on NJ Transit and Amtrak trains – to pay for construction of the new tunnels or other aspects of the Gateway project.

“We intentionally wrote the new $16 billion Transportation Trust Fund law in 2016 with no cap on annual borrowing in case we needed an extra $1 billion or more in any given year for Gateway or another major project.

“Construction of the Gateway project is an economic and quality-of-life imperative for the New York-New Jersey region.

“I want to make it absolutely clear today that it is the bipartisan intent of the New Jersey legislative leadership that under no circumstance would we accept a scenario where New Jersey Transit’s operating budget – which continues to be underfunded – would be saddled with any  portion of the construction cost of Gateway.

“A commitment to that principle will be a prerequisite for confirmation of any nominee to the new Gateway Commission that comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which I serve.”