People familiar with seeing the huge American flag hanging from one of the George Washington Bridge's towers were upset that it wasn't there on Wednesday—which happened to be July 4th. According to the Bergen Record, Fort Lee residents Peter and Ruth Adler contacted the Port Authority "to ask about the whereabouts of 450-pound banner - the world’s largest free-flying flag — and was told that the agency... was suddenly clamping down on overtime."
Ruth Adler was aghast, "They said the reason [they] took it down is they didn’t want to pay overtime, which means people would have to come back in the evening to roll it up. Twelve-dollar tolls on the busiest bridge in the country [and the Port Authority] can’t afford to pay a couple dollars extra on the hanging of the flag?" adding, "We do have soldiers in Afghanistan who are protecting our freedom, and they are serving, and it’s just a way of honoring them. They’re out there preserving our freedom, and we’re not hanging the flag. It just seemed wrong."
NJ State Senator Loretta Weinberg also contacted the Port Authority, also noting that the bridge wasn't illuminated: "What [PA deputy executive director Bill Baroni] told me is apparently they have a crew on from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., so the flag went up a little later than usual because it was raining in the early morning. They didn’t want to keep a crew past 3 o’clock." And the PA's spokesman Ron Marsico told the Bergen Record, "The flag has been flying that way for a number of years … like a one-shift thing." Yeah, if the Port Authority had passed its insane 50% toll hikes, maybe it'd be a two-shift thing.
