To Tom Moran, With Scorn
Who were the Christie enablers?
[Don’t miss the PS]
Tom – your column missed a very big part of this story – politics and public policy (see our prior political posturing piece).
The introduced version of the Open Space initiative, sponsored by Smith (SCR84) included a provision to dedicate NRD settlement money to the open space program. (see lines 31-35, page 3):
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2014/Bills/SCR/84_I1.PDF
This was done BEFORE the budget language was inserted on the $50 million cap you criticize.
The Keep It Green Coalition – including Deb Mans – OPPOSED that NRD dedication, and it was stripped from the final version in the Senate Substitute, SCR84 (SCS).
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2014/Bills/SCR/84_U1.PDF
[*** 3/9/15 Correction: Spoke with Jeff Tittel this morning – I was wrong. Tittel supported NRD dedication.Sorry for that.]
The Constitutional dedication of the funds would over-ride the legislative budget and prevent any diversion of NRD revenues to the General Fund. So if a one shot revenue gimmick was one of Christie’s motivations, it would have been eliminated.
So, it wasn’t just the Democrats who enabled this dirty deal, it was the same sources you now quote as heroes.
You did the same thing with using Dave Pringle in your editorials that you are now doing with Mans and Tittel.
Why do you reward the quislings, the cowards, the selfish money grabbers, and the enablers and ignore the truth tellers?
I resent the hell out of it because there was 1 guy who spoke truth from day 1, and I am totally marginalized and perceived as a radical.
Which leads us to the real enablers: the guys who swallowed the Christie spin or lacked the spine to tell the truth, those who wrote all the puff pieces, and the editorials that endorsed the lying bastard.
Wolfe
[ps – we soon will focus on the polluted hell at the Bayway site you describe and explain exactly how the cleanup laws were gutted and the cleanup program privatized by those very same people who now are the biggest critics of Christie’s deal – many of whom have benefitted financially or politically from the gutting of those cleanup laws or done NOTHING to criticize lax DEP and EPA oversight or to resist or assist communities in cleaning up toxic sites.
We will name names, like Lisa Jackson who did a u-turn on her initial recommendations to strengthen the cleanup laws and shepherded the privatization bill through the legislature and Deb mans who worked in the Corzine governor’s office and did nothing to stop it and Bob Smith who sponsored the bill and all the “green” and “sustainability” and “environmental justice” groups who did nothing and now receive lots of foundation money for doing nothing.
At the same time, those that do work on toxic site were defunded and/or marginalized, while resources were shifted to “the enablers” by the” leaders” of NJ’s Foundations. Again, we will name names, like Chris Daggett at Dodge, who, while presiding over this funding scheme benefitted financially from it by his corporate “brownfields” development work.
We also will talk about those who pimped the NRD program for revenues (see page 14-15), instead of working to strengthen it.
They didn’t care if the public got 3 cents on the dollar in NRD settlements, just as long as they got 2 of those pennies. We will name names, like Mike Catania now basking in tobacco blood money at the Duke Foundation. It won’t be pretty, but more to follow on this topic.]