Rick Cotton

Richard Cotton is the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He assumed this role in August 2017.

Early life and education

Cotton was born in 1945 or 1946 in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. His mother, Sylvia Cotton, founded Illinois Action for Children, a nonprofit that focuses on ensuring all children, especially those facing poverty and racial injustice, have access the high-quality child care and early education they need to succeed in school and in life. His father, Eugene Cotton, served as a labor lawyer. Cotton has a BA from Harvard University and a JD from Yale Law School.

Career

Upon graduation from Yale Law, Cotton served as a law clerk to Judge J. Skelly Wright on United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit during 1969–1970 and then to Justice William J. Brennan Jr. on Supreme Court of the United States during 1970–1971. He served as NBCUniversal's general counsel and New York governor Andrew Cuomo's "transportation czar" prior to becoming the Port Authority's executive director.

Prior to joining the Port Authority, Cotton served as New York State's Special Counsellor to the Governor for Interagency Initiatives, focused on the State's major downstate infrastructure projects such as LaGuardia and JFK Airports, the Moynihan Train Hall and Penn-Farley Complex, the new Tappan Zee Bridge, the expansion of the Javits Center, and the MTA's Second Avenue Subway project. Previously, Mr. Cotton spent 25 years at NBC Universal, where he held several positions, including 20 years as EVP and General Counsel and four years in London as president and managing director of CNBC Europe. He also served as Executive Secretary to the department at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare under Secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr. and Special Assistant for Renewable Energy to Deputy Secretary of Energy John Sawhill at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Cotton has advocated for a new air train running from Flushing to La Guardia. He has called this a one stop from downtown to the airport. Critiques have noted the transfers and distance involved to dispute this. This project has been viewed as an Andrew Cuomo vanity project that does not realize its intended purpose.

At the outbreak of the pandemic, when testing was scarce for Port Authority employees, Andrew Cuomo helped Cotton receive a COVID-19 test along with other executives, like Pat Foye and Cuomo family members.

Personal life

Cotton married Elizabeth W. Smith, the Assistant Commissioner of New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, in 2011.

On March 9, 2020, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that Cotton had been infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019. His wife also tested positive for the virus, and the couple were reported to have self-quarantined in their home. Cuomo reported on March 22 that Cotton had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 without having been hospitalized.