Moses’ authority projects secretly cost taxpayers billions in hidden subsidies

Evidence

Prudent, efficient, economical? So incredibly wasteful was Moses of the money he tolled from the public in quarters and dimes that on a single bridge alone he paid $40,000,000 more in interest than he had to. Authority projects cost the taxpayers nothing? Covert “loans” made to authorities by the state—loans designed never to be repaid—ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The cost of city-purchased land on which authority facilities were built ran into the hundreds of millions. The cost of taxpayer-financed toll roads leading to authority facilities ran into the billions. And the loss in tax revenue because authority-controlled land was removed from the tax rolls drained the city year after year. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 90

Categorization

• XREF: The shell-game of off-budget authority financing evading public scrutiny parallels the lease-construction and cost-shifting debacles in Base Nation’s account of overseas basing. — connects to: Moses flushed out the entire right-of-way for pennies by exploiting developers and county officials — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 931; Upstate fiscal conservatives armed Moses by underestimating total program costs — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 930; Moses marketed authorities as apolitical, efficient, and free to taxpayers — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 86 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Moses legally financed park projects through disguised line items in other departments’ budgets. #qualifies (0.78) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 934