How New York Dems Lit $100 Million On Fire Buying Lights

Taxpayers in New York shelled out over $100 million under former Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo for bridge lights that ultimately sat in storage before being auctioned off for pennies on the dollar.

At least $108 million was spent on Cuomo’s “Harbor of Lights” project, which was supposed to install specialty LED lighting on several New York State bridges. The project was pitched as a way to boost tourism, but the lights ended up sitting unused in a warehouse for more than seven years until they were recently auctioned off for less than half a percent of the project’s overall cost.

“It is what it is,” Justin Driscoll, president and CEO of the New York Power Authority, the lead state agency on the project, recently told CBS 6 Albany.

Cuomo announced the project in October of 2016, with a scheduled completion date of February 2018, according to Politico. Although the state originally planned to spend up to $250 million, disputes and competing priorities led to the top contractor on the project being instructed to cancel an order for lighting from a company called Phillips in late 2017.

By that time, more than $100 million had already been spent, and the unused lights were relegated to a warehouse for storage. Storing the lights has cost at least $2.1 million, though taxpayers will not bear the expense, according to CBS 6 Albany.

When asked in 2021 about the status of the project, a spokesperson for Cuomo insisted that it was still underway, according to Politico.

“This project will drive tourism — helping to rebuild an incredibly important part of New York’s economy that was destroyed by this pandemic — and make New York an even more dynamic place to live and open a business,” the Cuomo spokesperson told the outlet at the time.