well New Jersey Transit is hurtling toward a one billion dollar fiscal cliff considering layoffs service cuts and fair hikes as just some of the agency's options to make up the budget hole so the rail company's decision to move to an expensive new headquarters raised the eyebrows of many what's more the new location is just down the street from New Jersey transit's current spot and owned by Governor Murphy's donors now Bergen Record Transportation reporter Colleen Wilson uncovers the deal was made a full year before the agency sought bids for the new office space and she joins me now Colleen welcome really great reporting you were able to obtain exclusively some emails that led you to this tell me what you found yeah so uh the Republic information request I got emails between the owners of the of Onyx which is the building company that owns two Gateway and Transit officials regarding touring the bill building you know the one of the emails was quoted saying that Transit was going to be the right spot at two Gateway so this all happened a year before the agency started a real process as far as looking for new headquarters and really a year before they really started telling the public you know explaining to the public what was going on yeah and two Gateway of course being the location where they're looking to move we are also here located into Gateway why though was the agency planning to move at all that's a good question I think it's still something that you know deserves a lot more answers the agency has said and Kevin Corbett has said as recently as yesterday that they can't stay in their current building they explored Renovations which would cost 118 million dollars or thereabouts they say but that's a far cry from what the cost of the lease will be over 25 years at to Gateway what is that we're really not sure because the agency hasn't actually said but the back of the envelope math that I've done other reporters have done using the scant information that we have is that it's well over 400 million dollars so 400 million compared to 100 million to stay in a building that they own that needs some updates that's right okay so what else did the emails uncover as far as when these bids were going out to solicit you know a real estate company to help them find potentially new location well the emails that we have so far from 2021 which is a year before the agency even had the full ownership of the building that they're in which Kevin Corbett had previously previously said was the reason that they began to look at how much was it going to cost to renovate that building what other options could there be could they look at other office space did they have other options they had they had several other options they had the Panasonic building which is right around the corner from here they had three Penn Plaza East which is right next to transit's current headquarters orders and they had at least 80 Park Plaza which was the old PSEG building those were the ones we know of and yet those were not given the same consideration or were you able to get any information on that when you asked njt officials about that Transit officials haven't really talked much about the other options my reporting my sourcing shows and says that those options were cheaper and my sourcing says that they narrowed down the options to a short list to Panasonic and to to Gateway around November which is when they told the board so they had already made a short list before going to the board which is a little bit also of an eyebrow razor I think because the board definitely wants to be involved thinks that they should have had more of an understanding I think of what was going on yeah I mean you had previously reported back over the winter about Cedric Fulton stepping down pretty abruptly just before a meeting where they were to discuss this move what does that have to do with all of this going on because I believe you had written that he was really concerned about the lack of transparency that's right yeah and I think that's a really important thing to think about in the context of this whole story is that that's what triggered I think the questions from many people myself included why would a board member so suddenly resign the fight not only just a board member the vice chair of the board he holds you know a leadership position there so yeah so what he told me is that uh and what you could see from watching the board meetings as frequently as I do is that he had concerns about transparency why why weren't wasn't the board told about this sort of thing did they give adequate information about the options including the renovations including the other buildings that were on the table and so it seemed to reach a boiling point by February and he left all right Transportation reporter Colleen Wilson on this we will be checking back with you thanks Colleen thanks for having me [Music] [Music]