He was also limited to building bridges and roads that led to bridges.
So it's very focused on bridges.
That's kind of the whole concept of authority,
at least early in the US was around bridges.
There was one exception with the New York Harbor, but otherwise,
it was around these very precise infrastructure projects.
And then, the last problem was that the bridges made too much money.
The tolls paid off the bridge in no time at all.
And the maintenance required for the bridge was pretty low, and so
the authority would be up, build the bridge, and then it went away.
And all this revenue that he could produce disappeared as well.
So he didn't have the resources to do what he wanted to do.
So, what does he do about this?
How does he navigate these problems?
Here's Moses, he's not an elected official.
In fact, he had run for office early on, realized he wasn't going to win office,
and took this other root to influence.
He had developed expertise in drafting laws, he was well known in Albany,
he had a good track record, he had gotten many things built and done.
And so he had the confidence of the lawmakers in Albany.
Albany's the state capitol of New York.
And so his trick was to change the rules, essentially.
He got the law regarding the powers of authorities and
the nature of bonds changed.
He did this by literally writing legislation in Albany on it.
So under the new rules that he wrote, the Authority could retire and
issue new bonds.
Under the new rules,
the Authority could build projects not inconsistent with bridges.
So remember, previously, they were limited to bridges and roads leading to bridges.
Now they can do anything they want to as long
as they're not inconsistent with bridges.
This is as liberal as one could write that.
And then finally the Authority was not bound
by the civil service rules that applied to the government agencies.
So how did he do this, how did he pull this off?
So Carol walks us through this amazing story of, if the legislators and
the public officials had known that he was doing this,
they wouldn't have let it go, right?
So how did he do it?
He did a couple of things.
Mostly he surreptitiously dropped the verbiage into the back of the bill.
Or he would use a clause late in the bill that directly contradicted the obvious
clause in the front of the bill in this direction.
So partly because he was good, partly because they trusted him,
he was able to do that.
But that wouldn't be sufficient if, once it came to light, they could change it.
That was a real trick here.
How could he keep it from being changed?
He did that because he wrote this, not just into legislation,
he wrote it into the contracts that went with the bonds.
This is something he saw, a capability he saw of authorities,
that no one else had seen.
That bonds once issued are contracts from the bond issuers to the bond holders.
It’s a contract and
contracts are protected by the constitution of the United States.
Nobody can supersede a contract, no state authority,
nothing less than the constitution can contradict a contract.
So once he wrote these specs, these changes in regulations,
into the contracts associated with the bonds,
he had a contract that the state officials had no power over whatsoever.
So that was the trick, and then there was one last element, and that was well,
what about the fact that the funds, they pay off the bridge too quickly.
Therefore, you issue the bonds, fine,
but you've gotta retire the bonds as soon as the thing is done.
This was his last trick here.
He wrote, this was an example of his burying deep in legislation,