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Issue of the Week

Excerpted from the Mayor's State of the City Speech

14 January 1999

That's why we should get out of the Port Authority. You were wondering when I was going to get to that. The Yankees and the Mets are the most famous and the best teams in baseball. This year they're going to prove that. Kennedy Airport is number 35th of 36 in a ranking of airports. In other words, it's one of the worst in the country. LaGuardia is number 31st of 36. That's unacceptable to New York. That would be unacceptable to Los Angeles, it would be unacceptable to Boston, it would be unacceptable to any great City. Our transportation is the core of our ability to really survive and grow. We have got to get out of the Port Authority. This makes no sense to be partners with our friends in New Jersey because they extract more out of it than we do. I think that's been proven over and over again. So what we're going to do this year is we're going to announce that we're not going to renew the lease when it comes up in 2015, and we're going to immediately put out Requests for Expressions of Interest by private companies - we know of two that are very interested - in taking over the two airports, and to begin now to make concrete plans for how they would change those airports. Start it now. That may be a little bit soon - but actually, given the way things work, it isn't so soon. And hopefully by doing that, we will increase the pressure on them maybe to move aside. Because they're not going to be continued. We're not going to continue to allow them to lease that space from the City of New York any longer. They have proven that they can't do a good job of running the airports in the interests of the City of New York. It isn't personal. It's purely business.

I respect Governor Whitman. I respect the people in New Jersey. I think they're doing a terrific job. In fact, in a certain grudging way I respect the way they've used the Port Authority for their benefit and not ours. Like okay, guys, it's time now that we cut it out and we take our two airports and we use them for our benefit. And if that doesn't work we'll try other legal remedies to try to get ourselves out of it. But it's really important that we do that.


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