Moses got free survey work by housing DPW offices on park land he controlled

Evidence

Although no funds had been appropriated for surveying and engineering, there were suddenly surveyors and engineers out on the right-of-way, men furnished by the State Department of Public Works—whose Long Island office just happened to be located at the former August Belmont Estate near Babylon that Moses had acquired and turned into a state park, making the old Belmont Mansion his headquarters. And these men, they were told, were drawing up plans with unprecedented speed. Even as they digested this news, a bill was introduced in the Legislature providing for a million dollars for “the construction, reconstruction and widening of highway routes in Nassau and Erie Counties”—including $350,000 for “construction of the Southern State Parkway.” They had no trouble understanding why Erie, a Republican stronghold, had been given even more money than Nassau in the bill—Erie’s legislators would be even more determined than Nassau’s that the bill should pass, and an alliance of the GOP legislators from these two counties with the Democrats would make it impossible for Hewitt and Hutchinson to prevent its passage. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 932