A ‘Mario M. Cuomo’ Scandal

On top of Gov. Cuomo’s nursing-home scandal and sexual-harassment charges comes new cause for concern: an alleged coverup of serious flaws in the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

On Monday, the Thruway Authority denied any issues of concern over the $3.9 billion span, which replaced the Tappan Zee Bridge in 2017. But a Sunday Albany Times Union report alleges that the contractor “covered up” structural problems (faulty bolts), potentially endangering the public, and the authority basically let it slide.

“The bridge has been and continues to be safe,” insisted Jamey Barbas, the director of the construction project. Yet she ultimately answers to a governor who covered up the deaths of helpless nursing-home residents.

The TU interviewed “multiple people who worked on the project” and reviewed “engineering reports, scientific analyses, court records and correspondence on file with the attorney general’s office” — which did its own probe and reached a settlement with the contractor, Tappan Zee Constructors.

The AG probe rested on reviews by the Inspector General’s Office and the Thruway Authority, but the paper said its own reporting “raised questions about the thoroughness” of those reviews and the $2 million penalty and added year of warranty on “a limited number of sections of the bridge.”

It all began with warnings by a whistleblowing former TZC safety manager, who’d seen broken bolts and taped interviews with workers that “appeared to confirm” that the contractor’s team hid the matter from inspectors. The whistleblower claims the investigations well far short, with many key players never even interviewed.

Cuomo took great pride in the project, even naming the new bridge after his dad. Did that cause this scandal to be hushed up?

It’s up to Attorney General Letitia James to convince the public that the investigations were sufficient to certify the bridge’s safety, because New Yorkers can no longer trust anyone who reports to Cuomo.