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Billionaire’s Foundation Abuses Now Threaten All State Parks Due To New Law Gov. Murphy Just Signed

State Parks Have A $720 Million Unfunded Maintenance Deficit

DEP Desperation For Funds Opens The Door To Abuses By Private Foundation

A quick note today to clarify DEP Commissioner LaTourette’s remarks and media coverage of Saturday’s public hearing on DEP’s Liberty State Park development plans.

NJ Spotlight praised DEP Commissioner LaTourette and reported that LaTourette:

“called out the [Fireman] task force for purposely misleading the public” (at time: 0:40)

But here is what LaTourette actually said:

“I regret that there is misinformation on this point.” (at time 3:23)

Apparently, NJ Spotlight does not know the difference between misinformation and disinformation – and this is not a minor semantic point. It goes to whether LaTourette is being strong or weak. He is being portrayed by Spotlight as strong when in fact just the opposite is true. He is being weak. 

The Spotlight praise is false. LaTourette did not “call out” Fireman’s false information campaign, which is disinformation, not misinformation:

“Misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally misstating the facts.” (American Psychological Association)

If someone is “purposely misleading the public”, they are engaged in disinformation, not misinformation.

LaTourette is a trained and licensed lawyer. He traffics in words and uses them with precision. He knows this. If he mis-spoke, he should issue a public statement clarifying the issue and correcting his error.

But I don’t think he misspoke. I think he is afraid to “call out” Fireman. I think misled the public intentionally. The Commissioner not only gaslighted on the word he used, but he used the passive voice and did not name names. Pathetic.

The public is being duped and gaslighted once again.

Because if DEP can’t call out billionaire Fireman on this kind of blatant abuse, it means that they are in a weak political position.

And if that is the case, the final plans for the Park will be influenced by Fireman’s power.

Which takes me to the Statewide issues that Fireman’s “People’s Park Foundation” has exposed so clearly.

Gov. Murphy just signed a Democratically sponsored bill into law that creates a statewide private “State Parks And Open Space Foundation”, see: P.L.2023, c.256. It is modeled on the Fireman Foundation and is subject to exactly the same  corruption and abuses the Fireman Foundation has engaged in, see:

• Billionaire Paul Fireman’s AstroTurf Sham “Foundation” To “Develop” Liberty State Park Now Threatens All State Park

DEP Commissioner LaTourette testified to the Legislature that State Parks have a $720 million unfunded deficit in State Parks maintenance. DEP is desperate for money. The Legislature is not appropriating any and the previously Constitutionally dedicated $48 million per year was stolen by the “Keep It Green” Open Space campaign by greedy conservation groups, see: the Bergen Record:

• Budget cuts doom state parks to disrepair

Some environmental groups blame a voter-approved 2014 constitutional amendment. It shifted revenues from the state’s Corporation Business Tax away from capital improvements. Instead, they bolster Green Acres, a taxpayer-financed program that has preserved more than 650,000 acres of open space in its 55 years. …

Mark Texel, head of the New Jersey Division of Parks and Forestry, called it a “massive blow” and said in a Facebook post soon after the vote that it was “the darkest day I have faced in my professional career.” …

“We had a plan to really tackle some of these major capital projects that had been deferred for many, many years,” Texel said. “And we were making progress. Suddenly now our capital budget is having the legs cut out from underneath it. … It was disappointing, I admit. I was very disappointed.”…

Bill Wolfe, director of the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said he didn’t believe that voters in 2014 knew this would happen.

He accused NJ Keep It Green of “intentionally, knowingly” stripping state parks of capital funding to finance Green Acres so they wouldn’t have to ask voters to approve a bond. That, he said, let open space groups avoid a public brawl with Governor Christie, who has demanded no new debt be placed on taxpayers. The coalition, he said, “didn’t have the spine to fight for the money.”

That financial desperation means that DEP will approve virtually anything the new private Foundation proposes for parks development (especially when their is no organized advocacy group like Friends of Liberty State Park turning out hundreds of people to public hearings and no media coverage. And there are no public hearings required by the new State Parks Foundation law anyway.)

I gave Commissioner LaTourette an opportunity to correct his error (if he misspoke) and explain the new Parks Foundation law, see:

Gov. Murphy Quietly Signs Law Creating Statewide “Parks Foundation”

Law Provides An Institution To Solicit Dark Money And Inject Private Influence Over The Management Of State Parks

Corrupt Pay-To-Play Now Infects All NJ State Parks

AstroTurf – falsely made to appear grassroots

an astroturf campaign/group

When successful, Astroturf efforts resemble actual community mobilization efforts. They create the impression that local people are engaged in the effort and doing the things that traditional community organizations do.

NJ media have properly exposed, editorialized, and condemned the scheme by billionaire Paul Fireman to create a sham astroturf “Foundation” to develop and commercialize Liberty State Park.

Fireman created and funded a sham “Foundation” and used that Foundation as the vehicle to dupe the public and inject his private financial interests into Legislative and DEP policy decisions concerning the management of Liberty State Park.

The Fireman “Foundation” was a classic dark money pay-to-play scheme.

As a result of the media coverage, that scheme is now common public knowledge and the media exposure has effectively shamed and derailed Fireman’s project, at least for now and until the heat dies down.

This is exactly what good journalism can and should do: protect the public interest and expose the self-serving schemes of private special interests.

So, given how rightly appalled the media was about Fireman’s sham Liberty State Park “Foundation” and how this “Foundation” was so transparently an astro-turf vehicle to solicit dark money, dupe the public, and inject private influence over the management of State Parks, how is it possible that that same media has totally ignored legislation recently signed into law by Governor Murphy that is based on the Fireman’s Foundation model (and it expressly targets and includes Liberty State Park)? See:

• NJ Gov. Murphy Just Corporatized State Parks And Forests – Liberty State Park Targeted By Lame Duck Stealth Amendments

The new “State Parks Foundation” Gov. Murphy just created (with help from Democrats in the Legislature) is a blatant pay-to-play scheme (no pun intend).

The Foundation membership is composed of private interests.

The Foundation is given powers to solicit unlimited private funding, to design parks projects, and to dedicate funding to those projects it designed and raised funds for.

NJ State Parks have a $720 million unfunded maintenance backlog, so DEP’s desperation for money will mean that anything the Foundation wants it will get approved by DEP.

The Foundation is not subject to NJ Open Public Meetings Act, so the public can be shut out of Foundation deliberations and planning and Parks funding decisions.

The Foundation is not subject to NJ’s Open Public Records Act, so the public will not have access to documents, funding sources, park plans, and meeting deliberations and decisions.

The Foundation is not subject to NJ’s ethics laws so there will be gross conflicts of interest, a virtual invitation for pay to play schemes.

The Foundation is not subject to NJ’s campaign finance and disclosure laws, another invitation for the corrupt influence of dark money.

Yet the NJ media has not written one story about this law! (to my knowledge).

How can this be?

How can this kind of corruption go unreported?

Billionaire Paul Firestone Funds Front Groups To Sow Divisive Fake Debate

Democratic Legislators Are All In And Are Fast Tracking Legislation

The Gov. Must Stand Up And Stop This Desecration

(above photo originally posted in “Birds Eye View – Liberty State Park” – March 1, 2008)

Murphy DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette curiously was AWOL last Thursday, as the Senate Environment Committee rammed a controversial bill to commercialize, privatize, develop, and destroy world renowned Liberty State Park. (read the amazing story of what went down at the hearing:

The state Department of Environmental Protection, which leads the task force formed to study the park’s future, did not appear at Thursday’s hearing.

Instead, a makeover plan was presented by Alan Mountjoy of the Boston-based firm NBBJ, an architect hired by one of the advocacy groups tied to Fireman.

Mountjoy showed renderings of a vastly different park than the mostly open space and interior woodland that exists today.

But Latourette had time to Tweet (and attend?) a “Pride” event at the Park the night before.

That contrast is a classic example of what Professor Nancy Fraser calls “Progressive Neoliberalism”, where cultural issues are used to mask a pro-corporate economic agenda and divert, dupe, manipulate, and co-opt progressive activists and media alike.

Gov. Murphy has repeatedly used that cynical strategy. We are not fooled.

He must not get away with that to let a billionaire manipulate legitimate grievances and effectively buy and destroy Liberty State Park.

This is what happens when a billionaire like Paul Fireman spreads a little money around in a cynical, divisive & racist strategy to promote his golf course, a scheme that is masked by fake front groups and corrupt Democratic politicians.

I was disgusted by the racist spectacle in Trenton – Fireman has cynically used fake front groups and manipulated poor black kids, lonely old people, and high school athletes who lack fields to play on – problems that are a result of the greed of developers and lack of planning, not preservation of the Park.

Somehow, the entire gamut of social problems were linked to the preservation of Liberty State Park.  Very cynically, the false promise of a solution was claimed to be development of the park (which largely would benefit a Florida based billionaire and his private golf course members and other wealthy elites who will use the commercial facilities he wants to develop in the Park).

In a very sophisticated campaign, one witness defended park development as a solution to prevent drownings of poor minority kids who lacked swimming pools. Another witness supporting the bill complained of the isolation of old age. Others spoke of the risks of violence to kids, who have nowhere safe to play.

In a move that would make Orwell blush, they call themselves “Parks for People”.

The Legislature is fast tracking the bill – the Assembly will hear the companion bill A4264 on Wednesday.

The plan is to ram the bill through both Houses as part of the budget negotiations and have a bill on Governor Murphy’s desk before the end of June.

Friends of Liberty State Park have dubbed the legislation the “Billionaire Paul Fireman Liberty State Park Commercialization, Privatization and Exclusion” bill.

At this point, the Legislature appears to have been bought off –

Senator Smith’s rationales for the amendments, which were very cynically designed to create the appearance of responding to critics, and the rapid movement of the Assembly companion are solid evidence that the deal is in. It’s even possible that the $250 million appropriation in the bill could be stripped and the bill pass to promote development but with no public money.

The park supporters’ focus needs to shift quickly to Gov. Murphy and people must demand that he stand up to his own party and veto this outrage.

[End Note: For over 30 years, despite frequent disagreements, I’ve criticized his weakness but basically respected Senator Smith (with a few exceptions).

But given how he’s handled the State Parks and LSP issues, that respect is gone and it ain’t coming back.

Now I understand why he attacked critics of his Parks privatization bill as “paranoid schizophrenics” and why he lashed out at LSP supporters several times during last Thursday’s hearing.

The criticism is obviously getting under his skin.

I suspect that it must be tough for Smith to look in the mirror these days.

Peter Kellogg’s Hudson Farm Funds Highlands Logging, Hunting, & Sham Carbon Markets

From Jane Addams and Benton MacKaye To A Wall Street Grift

Hudson Farm

The oblivious arrogance operating here is stunning.

If for the optics alone, didn’t DEP Commissioner LaTourette see a problem here?

NJ Gov. Murphy today issued the annual Governor’s “Environmental Excellence” awards.

I’ve previously noted how political those awards are, see:

• RGGI Is A Political Cover – Money Laundering Operation

This year, my eye caught this one, issued to a Wall Street billionaire and owner of Hudson Farm: (boldface mine)

HEALTHY ECOSYSTEMS & HABITATS: Hudson Farm

Hudson Farm operates as a year-round outdoor experience for its members on more than 4,000 acres of land in Sussex County. The farm manages its land voluntarily through its New Jersey-approved Forest Stewardship Plan, along with multiple associated and complementary voluntary conservation projects. This work has provided enormous regional ecological uplift over the years. This year, Hudson Farm voluntarily implemented ecological forestry practices on an annual basis including forest-stand thinning, integrated pest management, reforestation and invasive species controls, as well as stream and water quality restorations, riparian buffer work, wetland restoration and native grassland restorations to benefit various declining wildlife species. From October 2020 to October 2021, Hudson Farm and its partners implemented more than 130 acres and 1.5 miles of habitat restoration/stewardship on its property, as well as wildlife monitoring projects. The results were enhanced biodiversity, improved surface water infiltration, provided critical habitat, controlled soil erosion and sediment runoff, and diversified forest age-class to improve forest resiliency, carbon sequestration and improved nutrient cycling.

Let me translate that bullshit and tell folks what the DEP press release left out:

1) the “year-round outdoor experience” Hudson Farm provides is a private hunting club for elite members (they even brag of a heli-pad to wisk Wall Streeters to the Farm in just minutes). They manage their land to maximize hunting opportunities for their private members:

The Hudson Farm Club operates as a private year round outdoor experience for its members as one of the most attractive and challenging shooting layouts in the country since 1997

2) the “New Jersey-approved Forest Stewardship Plan” is part of a DEP scandal that promotes commercial logging under various guises, slogans and pretexts, like stewardship, sustainability, forest health, wildfire prevention, and habitat creation.

3) “ecological forestry practices and forest-stand thinning” are code for logging and maximizing game species habitat to promote hunting.

4) the “riparian buffer” work fails to note that under DEP’s Forestry Best Management Practices, riparian (stream side) buffer protections are only 50 feet wide, compared to regulatory protections they are exempted from, which are 300 feet wide for Highlands and Category One stream buffers.

5) Hudson Farm’s “partners” include NJ Audubon. Hudson Farm provided a huge $330,000 grant to NJ Audubon to conduct logging on public green acres acquired lands (e.g. Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area and other Highlands forests). NJ Audubon’s logging has been criticized by local activists, numerous scientists, and the Highlands Coalition for logging core Highlands forests – including a Forest Stewardship Council Audit.

NJ Audubon also formed a “partnership” with and received significant funding from Donald Trump. Recently, NJ Audubon hired a former Exxon-Mobil hack to lead their Corporate Stewardship program.

6) Hudson Farm owner billionaire Peter Kellogg also funded 15 DEP employees to attend a weeklong junket at $5,000 a head. I wonder if the Gov. is aware of this egregious conflict of interest?

7) “wildlife monitoring projects” are largely designed to promote hunting.

8) the mention of “carbon sequestration” fails to note that Hudson Farm is generating profits and economic benefits from participation in a sham carbon credit and offset market scheme. (Hudson Farm and Kellogg also may benefit from DEP’s climate PACT rules and RGGI sequestration and offset programs, two more egregious conflicts of interest)

9) Finally, DEP’s press release fails to note that Hudson Farm is owned by Wall Street billionaire Peter Kellogg (the place ironically began during the Progressive Era to benefit poor urban kids. Hit that link and read the history):

The Hudson Guild, a charitable organization who ran the property as a camp.

Notice how the DEP press release also fails to mention that the “camp” was for poor urban kids and part of the Progressive Era reforms and the politics of guilds. It was also the place where Benton MacKaye conceived the Appalachian trail. His regional planning philosophy and public interest ethic would be appalled  by the current Hudson Farm elite private enterprise and Gov. Murphy’ recognition of that. So, MacKaye and Jane Addams now join Mumford and McHarg in rolling in their graves.

10) Is Wall Street Peter a friend of Phil and Tammy?

The oblivious arrogance operating here is stunning.

If for the optics alone, didn’t DEP Commissioner LaTourette see a problem here?

The Theft Of State Parks Funding Has Become The Pretext For Privatization 

[Important Update below]

There has been swift public and press outrage over a stealth provision in the emergency COVID budget that mandates that DEP “shall” solicit privatization proposals for all State Parks, including the crown jewel Liberty State Park, where billionaire Paul Fireman is seeking to expand a golf course into LSP lands.

Yesterday, the NY Times ran a killer story, that amounts to a huge national embarrassment for NJ Gov. Murphy, see:

• Buried in N.J.’s Budget Cuts: a Break for a Billionaire –   A stopgap budget with $4 billion in cuts also includes an opening for private development in state parks, like a long-desired expansion of a golf course into Liberty State Park.

Today, the Star Ledger editorial board followed up to flat out condemn Gov. Murphy, Trenton legislators and lobbyists for billionaire’s, see:

• Murphy and his golf cronies have Liberty State Park in their crosshairs.

  Today, the 21 acres of Caven Point is a sanctuary for migratory birds, a pristine place where New Jerseyans gather to catch a glimpse of the peregrine falcon, the yellow-crowned night-heron, or the snowy owl.

  But because Gov. Murphy has decided to collaborate with plutocrats who believe that the public interest can be sold, this corner of Liberty State Park may soon be populated by — mirabile visu! —hideously-dressed millionaires clutching their 3-irons and whacking their double bogeys.

But, in contrast to other harsh coverage, NJ Spotlight ran a typically tepid piece of he said/she said bullshit, that provided a platform for Gov. Murphy’s office to spin, deny and dodge accountability for an egregious betrayal of the public.

It’s hard to know where to begin in correcting the spin, half truths and lies (by omission) in that Spotlight story, so let’s start from the totally misleading primary premise.

The sole justification for privatization and commercialization of State Parks is that current State budget revenues are inadequate to fund a huge deficit in State Parks maintenance.

Spotlight bemoans that fact with this bullshit lie:

The provision, buried in a 110-page bill that many lawmakers never noticed, is reigniting a long-running dispute over how the state can both maintain and invest in its extensive park system, which has suffered years of funding neglect, in the wake of recurring budget crises.

While it is correct that State Parks have a huge unfunded maintenance backlog and are not adequately funded by the State budget, the cause of the deficit has been ignored.

NJ Spotlight reporter Tom Johnson knows why the deficit was caused. Tom knows that the voters of NJ approved an amendment to the NJ Constitution to dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars to fund this maintenance deficit. He knows that his fellow foundation funded friends at the Keep It Green Coalition ran a $1 million PR campaign to dupe the public into stealing this money and diverting it to open space.

Tom knows all that.

But he not only fails to report it to explain the “years of funding neglect”, he outright intentionally misled readers about it.

So, let me be clear: The cause of the deficit is the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars of previously Constitutionally dedicated State Parks maintenance money was stolen and diverted to the Open Space program, see:

• Head of NJ State Parks Service Calls Damage From Open Space Diversion “Worse than Sandy”

NJ Spotlight outright lies about this, both by omission and commission.

First, they distort the funding deficit issue, by implying that it is caused by the huge revenue declines caused by COVID, and they do that right up front, at the outset, in the he said/she said sub-headline of the story:

Administration says ‘no,’ but paragraph buried in 110-page budget extension suggests that private developers could help counterbalance some COVID-19 deficits

The budget language says NOTHING about any objective to “counterbalance COVID-19 deficits”.

That was totally made up by Tom Johnson, and it was done for a reason.

That reason is: if the State Parks maintenance funding deficits were caused by COVID-19, then the real cause of the deficits remains obscured.

Tom Johnson seeks to obscure the real cause of the deficits because if the real cause were widely known, it would expose his schlock reporting in failing to write about the impacts of the diversion of State Parks maintenance funding to the open space program.

Tom Johnson seeks to obscure the real cause of the deficits because if the real cause were known, it would embarrass and humiliate and expose the venality of his friends in the Keep It Green Coalition, who successfully advocated for the diversion of Parks funding that has harmed the parks and become the justification of privatization.

If the real cause of the deficit were known, then those huge NJ Foundations – Dodge, Fund For NJ, Wm. Penn – who funded the Keep It Green Coalition $1 million PR campaign to steal State Parks funding would be exposed as the elite frauds and hypocrites that they are – including their Neoliberal ideologies about elevating private and corporate interests over public goods, the public commons, and the public interest.

If the real cause of the deficit were known, then the Governor and legislators would have no cover story and pretext to hide their efforts to reward their billionaire donors by privatizing public assets.

(of course, they could also raise taxes on the rich and corporations, but that option is not even on the table, which just proves that Murphy & his Dems are really Neoliberals.)

That’s what’s really going on here.

And that’s the danger of the corrupt self serving frauds who parade around under “Keep It Green” banners and faux notions of progressive public interest journalism. 

Let’s hope that their greedy over-reach triggers a backlash that results in the passage of the Liberty State park protection act, the abolition of privatization of all State Parks and State lands, and the defunding and public shaming of the elite hypocritical Foundations and faux “conservation” groups of the Keep It Green coalition.

[End Note: And if it wasn’t for the diligence of Jeff Tittel of Sierra Club – who has criticized prior Murphy privatization schemes and exposed this latest one – this may have passed under the radar. Kudos also to LSP champion Sam Pesin.

Also Note that all the Keep It Green Coalition groups I criticize above have done NOTHING on this issue or mumbled a word of criticism of Gov. Murphy. That silence speaks volumes. They are corrupt and in the tank for Murphy.]

[Update: Wow! A NJ reader just sent me this story, which illustrates that this privatization scheme was totally consistent with former Wall Streeter Gov. Murphy’s prior scheme to “monetize” “undervalued” State assets, including State Parks – here’s the story, reported by NJ Spotlight, but not by reporter Tom Johnson:

• NJ Seeks Advisor For Potential Deals Involving State Assets

Like I said, this is worse than Christie’s park revenue/privatization schemes.

Failure to hold the Dems accountable to  betrayals and sellouts like this is what led to Trump.