Cuomo was behind replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge in 2017, even managing to get it named after his father, former NY Governor Mario Cuomo.

But a new report in the Albany Times Union alleges that structural problems, including faulty bolts, were “covered up” and that the New York Thruway Authority didn’t do anything about it.

The report revealed that dozens of bolts, an “abnormally high number that indicated a potential for very serious problems” broke at the assembly site, on the assembled girders, and on other places already installed at the bridge. The girders are held together by “splice plates,” with each connection secured by about 500 bolts. Problems with bolts could weaken the structure and result in a catastrophic collapse, the paper said. //

One worker, Jimmy Jordan, was injured when one of the bolts snapped at the threads as he was trying to tighten it and connect two girders. A piece of the bolt bounced off an overhang and hit him in the face, splitting his lip.

But Jordan, whose facial injury had sparked the whistleblower’s probe, told the Times Union in a series of interviews last year that he believes that the bolts were defective. At a meeting in a parking lot, he showed a reporter a plastic grocery bag full of cracked and broken bolts that he had collected during the construction project — in part because he thought something was wrong. Some of the bolts had gouge-like fissures on the tops where they had apparently not been “finished” during the manufacturing process. Others had snapped along the threads.

“I got a whole bin full of them at home,” said Jordan, who says he was never interviewed by state investigators.

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NYS Thruway, I-87