The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is, by all accounts, a mess.

The bi-state agency is continuously mired in debt and scandal.

Strong-armed by the unions that represent its employees, the Port Authority lavishes outlandish pay and benefits on its workforce.

Decades of corruption and mismanagement have created an unwieldy organization

that desperately needs reform.

Hello, I'm City Journal editor Brian Anderson. Thanks for joining us for the Ten Blocks

podcast featuring urban policy and cultural

commentary with City Journal editors, contributors, and special guests. Today on the Ten Blocks

podcast, we talked to City Journal's senior editor Stephen Malanga, who was among many other things,

a senior fellow as well at the Manhattan Institute.

Steve's essay in the Spring 2016 issue of City Journal, bloated, broke, and bullied, takes a hard look at the

chaotic debt-ridden reality of the Port Authority. It's the latest in an ongoing series on the Port Authority that we're running. Stephen Mlanga, thanks

for joining us on 10 blocks. My pleasure. The Port Authority is 95 years old this year.

What was it originally formed to do? Well, it's part of an interstate compact, which essentially

means that Congress had to

grant it the right to create this operating agency that operated across state lines.

And the reason for that was New Jersey and New York were often in dispute about the port

of New York in New Jersey, and particularly about rail operations on the port. They couldn't

basically decide who should govern them, and they found themselves oftentimes in court over

these issues, and a federal judge finally said, maybe you need to find a way to cooperate. And

the Port Authority grew out of that and began really with what should have been a very focused, modest effort to sort out how to run the Great Port of New York at that time.

The agency has tremendous debt problems because of its massive personnel costs, especially

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