Although Chief Executive Officer Steve Bland acknowledged that a proposal to hire three lobbying firms for a total of up to $400,000 a year for the next three years "has created quite a stir," the Port Authority board voted 8-0 yesterday to approve their contracts.

Members yesterday moved without comment to hire Ron Klink & Associates, headed by former U.S. Rep. Ron Klink; Greenlee Partners, with offices in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Washington, D.C.; and Pittsburgh-based Eckert Seamans, also the authority's longtime general counsel.

They will do lobbying and government relations in addition to a firm already performing such services, Klett Lieber Rooney & Schorling, whose $200,000-a-year contract runs through 2009.

The authority already has a full-time government relations person on its staff, Dan DeBone, who deals mostly with county, municipal and locally elected state officials and handles their requests for information, assistance and constituent services.

"Over the next few years, the government relations workload will be anything but light," Mr. Bland said. "Engaging outside firms on an as-needed basis is preferable to bringing on extra staff. In the current environment, going without such representation seems to me to be as untenable as going into a courtroom without an attorney."

Among issues with financial impacts on the authority are the still unsettled tolling of Interstate 80 as a key part of the state's Act 44 transportation funding program; the controversial 10 percent county drink tax and restructuring bus-trolley service under the "Connect 09" program.