This Is Peak Government…

It sounded like a great idea. 

Governor Andrew Cuomo, before he was unceremoniously forced out of office, convinced state lawmakers to shell out over $100 million to purchase decorative LED lights to enhance the beauty of some of New York’s most iconic bridges. 

The cost seems excessive, but this is the government. You have to make room for paying double or triple to satisfy all the people with their hands out–they need to make an excessive profit, pay exorbitant salaries to preferred workers, throw some money at consulting and design firms, and leave some money left over to recycle into political donations. 

Underneath it all, the project wasn’t a bad idea. Beautify the city a bit, right? Not everything has to be stolid, brutalist, and inhuman. 

Except… 

Read about it here 👇https://t.co/E9nQeBCAXa

— Melissa O’Rourke (@melissa_newsham) July 10, 2025

Spending the money was the point, not actually beautifying the city. The lights were purchased and stored in a warehouse for years until being auctioned off. 

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.

Not even a government warehouse. The state wound up paying millions of dollars to store the lights that were never used, adding to the already staggering cost of a project that accomplished nothing. 

Peak government. 

“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. 

“It is what it is.” I mean, c’mon, what did you expect? Silly goose, your tax dollars are our plaything. 

As usual, the bureaucrats had great reasons to be excited for this innovative project. Rather than costing money, it would bring in tourists (of which New York has so few right now), so it really was an INVESTMENT, not an expense. 

The original plan was to spend a quarter billion dollars, but apparently $108 million was enough to satisfy the grifters. Perhaps a quarter billion dollars would be noticed, and not forgotten for nearly a decade. 

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.

Things like this happen all the time, and often at a larger scale. Think California High Speed Rail, which has spent billions of dollars over many years to accomplish absolutely nothing. Not one mile of track has been laid, but you can bet that a lot of people have been living off that flow of tax money going into their pockets. 

For some reason, a lot of people still think that there is a correlation between what politicians say and what they actually do. It is a mystery to me. It’s a miracle that anything gets done. 

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