NEW YORK CITY-Christopher O. Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is reportedly set to resign by the end of October, unnamed sources told the New York Times late Thursday. The announcement comes on the heels of the Port Authority’s recent fare and toll increase and the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, both said to be hallmarks of Ward’s tenure.

The Times said the decision poses an issue for Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who now must replace Ward as well as Jay Walder, who resigned as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in July. The article also alludes to an unstable working relationship between Ward and Cuomo. GlobeSt.com previously reported that Ward called for stronger leadership at both the local and federal levels at a New York Building Congress event on August 31, just two weeks before the opening of the 9/11 Memorial.

“If we are going to construct the next generation of critical projects, we need to restore the critical constituency and come back to our pragmatic center,” he said. “As a nation, a city, and of builders, current politics cannot endure,” Ward added. “We will not only lose the great public works projects that made us great, but we will lose our democratic center that has fundamentally bound us as a nation.”