New Jersey lawmakers said New York legislation to reform the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was hurriedly adopted without public hearings and they plan to hold their own session on the overhaul proposal.
Democratic state Sen. Bob Gordon said he will hold a public hearing on Thursday.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York threw their support behind a bill in the New York Legislature that would create a rotating chairmanship among other changes. But New Jersey's Democrat-led Legislature has not endorsed the proposal.
Both states must enact the same legislation to bring about an overhaul.
The hearing in New Jersey comes after United Airlines CEO Jeffrey Smisek and two other top executives abruptly resigned Tuesday amid a federal investigation into the possible trading of favors between the airline and David Samson, the Christie-appointed former head of the Port Authority.
When Samson was in charge at the Port Authority, United resumed direct flights to the South Carolina airport near his vacation home. Around the same time, United was pressing for concessions from the agency, including a new hangar at the Newark airport, rent reductions and a commuter rail-line extension that would connect the airport directly to lower Manhattan.
No one has been charged in the case. A spokeswoman for Samson said Wednesday that Smisek's resignation "is a United Airlines matter." A Port Authority representative had no comment.
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The investigation was an offshoot of the so-called Bridgegate case, a scandal that has cast a shadow over Christie's White House hopes.
Three Christie allies — his former deputy chief of staff and two former top executives at the Port Authority — were charged last spring with closing lanes and engineering all-out gridlock at the foot of the nation's busiest bridge in September 2013 to exact revenge on a Democratic mayor who declined to endorse Christie's re-election bid. Christie has denied any knowledge of the plot.
Federal and state authorities expanded the bridge investigation to examine possible wrongdoing in the handling of billions of dollars in public works projects undertaken by the Port Authority.
Samson headed Christie's gubernatorial transition team and has long been a key adviser. He resigned in 2014 after the Port Authority was implicated in the bridge scandal.
