Republican legislative leaders calculated they could strangle Moses’ project by slow committee control

Evidence

Hewitt and Hutchinson had been pleased with the compromise with Smith. By postponing work on the Northern State Parkway until fifteen miles of the Southern State were built, they thought they were consigning the former road to some far-distant limbo; construction of the fifteen-mile-long Bronx River Parkway, after all, had taken fourteen years. And since they could outvote Smith two to one on the committee set up to supervise park expenditures, they assumed they could keep the pace of construction on the Southern State slow. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 929

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels other Caro chapters (and general political history) showing how committees and pace control are used to neuter rivals’ projects after the headline deal is struck.