Plotting at the Peace Bridge
Jerry Zremski
WASHINGTON – Peace Bridge Authority Chairman Sam Hoyt said state officials had “brainwashed” potential opponents of plaza renovations at the bridge in order to win their support.
Maria C. Lehman, the state’s Peace Bridge project manager, said design work for the project was nearing completion – even though, under federal law, design work is not supposed to be done until after a final federal environmental approval.
Lehman then went on to explain how she was plotting to keep that environmental approval quiet in hopes of avoiding a lawsuit, and to win Common Council approval of property transactions tied to the Peace Bridge project by circumventing a committee whose chairman is one of the projects’s fiercest critics, North Council Member Joseph Golombek Jr.
It all happened in a little-noticed public meeting of the Peace Bridge Authority board April 25, and it’s all revealed in audio recordings obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and released to The Buffalo News on Wednesday.
http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/plotting-at-the-peace-bridge-20140806