New Jersey’s new governor is holding up New York’s appointment of a new executive director of the bistate Port Authority, the Daily News has learned. The gubernatorial grievance, first reported by The New York Times, has both states in a deadlock: Garden State Gov. Mikie Sherrill wants to revive a deputy executive director position at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and fill it with her former chief of staff, Jean Roehrenbeck. Absent New York’s consent to that plan, Sherrill is withholding support for Gov. Hochul’s pick for the Port’s executive director — top Hochul aide Kathryn Garcia, who has yet to be confirmed by the Port Authority board. Four sources confirmed the ongoing deadlock to The News, which comes as one of the Port Authority’s longest-serving leaders, Executive Director Rick Cotton, is set to retire at the end of the month. The Port Authority’s deputy executive director role has been unfilled since the Bridgegate scandal in 2013, when then-Deputy Director Bill Baroni became embroiled in the Chris Christie-era plot to inflict traffic on the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, NJ. Before then, New Jersey traditionally selected the agency’s deputy chief, while New York appointed the executive director. Since the demise of the deputy executive director, New Jersey has, by informal agreement, selected the chairman of the Port’s board. That role is currently filled by Kevin O’Toole, a longtime New Jersey politico, who was nominated and approved for another six-year term last month in the waning, lame-duck weeks of former New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s term. Several sources described the spat — which has been the subject of low-key talks between Albany and Trenton for weeks — as an effort on Sherrill’s part to shape an organization that she inherited full of Murphy loyalists, with Garcia’s nomination meanwhile left hanging in the balance. “This is really a fight between Sherrill and Murphy,” one source familiar with the ongoing negotiations, who was unauthorized to speak publicly, told The News. Spokespeople for neither the New York nor the New Jersey governor responded to request for comment Friday. ...read more read less