As Ronald Reagan said, "There You Go Again."

  Oh, Chrissie, what have you done this time? 


    On the last Friday in April,  2011, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) received a very expensive letter from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

    The letter said that the Department of Transportation would order the governor to repay the $271 million already provided to New Jersey for that project to build a new commuter tunnel under the Hudson River. After abruptly withdrawing from the project, Gov. Christie had appealed an earlier order to return the funds.   But as this letter clearly indicated, the DOT did not accept his rationale for bailing on the ARC Tunnel project.

   

"The law is clear on this matter," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrote in a letter to U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg today explaining the decision. The state received federal funds on the expectation that it would see the ARC tunnel through to its completion, he wrote.



   "In this case, after the initial contract was entered into and later expanded at Governor Christie's request, the state of New Jersey broke the terms of the contract," LaHood wrote. "The Governor's unfortunate decision will affect the commuters in New Jersey and the entire Northeast region for generations."


      Christie pulled the plug on the project last year citing the possibility of substantial cost overruns, which would have fallen to New Jersey taxpayers.  

   After reviewing the state's appeal,  LaHood wrote that Christie was well aware in August 2008 that costs could grow from the baseline estimate of $8.7 billion to as much as $12 billion.

   

"Any notion that the potential for cost growth constituted new and emergent information when the Governor made his decision is simply not accurate," LaHood wrote.

   
A spokesman for the governor declined to say if the governor knew about the higher cost projections in 2008. New Jersey Transit, which received the federal funds, also declined to comment. 

      

"This is an unfortunate situation," said Lautenberg and Sen. Robert Menendez in a statement. "We worked hard to get the parties to negotiate a fair resolution of this conflict. However the state's outside lawyers pursued an all or nothing approach, which brings substantial risk to New Jersey taxpayers. Given the high stakes involved in this matter, we sincerely hope the state's approach is successful."


     Interest will start to accrue on the $271 million starting today (4-29-2011) at an annual rate of 1 percent, according to federal law.  

   Meanwhile, the D.C. based law firm of Patton & Boggs continues to work on the state's appeal, having already billed New Jersey for $800,000 in legal expenses for December and January, with additional bills to come for the tax-payers.

Your Vocabulary Lesson for the Day

   

    Once again, Gov. Chris Christie appeared on national television to spread his idiosyncratic version of history.  Appearing in an interview on ABC with Diane Sawyer, he said, 

    "I believe the teachers in New Jersey in the main are wonderful public servants that care deeply. But their union, their union are a group of political thugs." 

     He said the New Jersey Education Association refused to negotiate on a salary freeze last year. 

"They should have taken the salary freeze. They didn't and now, you know, we had to lay teachers off."

"They chose to continue to get their salary increases rather than be part of the shared sacrifice," he said.

     Dismissing objections to his blunt talk, Christie said, 

"We're from New Jersey and when you're from New Jersey, what that means is you give as good as you get."

    Christie is also suggesting a dramatic change in the state's tenure program, forcing tenured teachers to undergo a yearly review and face removal from tenure if they're found to be ineffective.
    thug   [thuhg] –noun

1. a cruel or vicious ruffian, robber, or murderer

    But here is what the Newark Star Ledger has to say about Christie's remarks:

     When Christie told ABC TV’s Diane Sawyer, in an interview aired Wednesday night that New Jersey teachers “should have taken a salary freeze. They didn’t, and, you know, we had to lay teachers off,” it’s incorrect.

And he knows it.

     Even if all school districts had agreed to freeze pay and contribute 1.5 percent of salary toward health premiums, it would have covered only 22 percent of Christie’s proposed education cuts. 

    Christie still would have had to cover $849 million in cuts, according to a report by the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services.

    In other words, even if the unions had caved, thousands of teachers still would have lost their jobs — 

which is why the New Jersey Education Association advised local unions against accepting the freeze.

bul·ly-    [bool-ee]noun, plural -lies, verb, -lied, -ly·ing, adjective, interjection–noun

1. a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.

Double Standard for Double Dipping?

 Joe DiVincenzo, Jr, and Gov. Christie,
perhaps discussing other ways to say one thing and do another.
Laughing all the way to the bank, at the tax payers' expense.

    

 At the end of March, a story broke in New Jersey which reported that Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo Jr., a Democrate, had quietly been collecting a monthly $5,738 pension since August, 2010 — on top of his $153,207 annual pay. Even as he worked with Gov. Christie to push for pension reform, claiming that the state was broke.

A look at Christie'ss first year in office shows that has cozied up to politicians who don’t always practice what he preaches. Although he attacks teachers, cops and bureaucrats for various abuses, he goes silent when his allies are caught in their own controversies — especially Democrats whose help he needs on New Jersey’s political battlefield.

   Christie has worked closely with DiVincenzo on rolling back pension benefits. Earlier this year, the county executive said, “The bank is broken, and the time has come to put everything on the table.”

  DiVincenzo’s nonretirement retirement let him tack a $68,862 annual pension to his $153,207 salary, and public employee unions called him a hypocrite.

   DiVincenzo said he did nothing wrong, adding he’s only trying to take care of his family. He said he’s following a law that lets public employees retire while still holding elected office as long as they previously held a different public job.

  As a candidate for governor, Chris Christie promised to stop public employees from double-dipping in the salary and pension punch bowl.

   Among the "88 Ways Chris Christie Will Fix New Jersey" on his campaign website were No. 23, 

      "I will fully eliminate dual officeholding by our state's elected officials by proposing immediate changes to state law," and 

   No. 24, "I will ban the practice of dual public employment, whereby one person holds a full-time government job while also holding a salaried, elected position."




Update:  On March 4, Gov. Christie was asked about DiVincenzo's situation and offered his criticism:

"I made this really clear. I think it's wrong," he said. "And it's not just for him. It's wrong for all the other people who are doing it."

Come On Up for the Rising-- Once Again Christie Misses Springsteen's Point

   






   Below please find a letter that appeared in the Asbury Park Press recently:

Letter to the Editor

Thank you for your March 27 front-page story by Michael Symons, "As Poverty Rises, Cuts Target Aid." The article is one of the few that highlights the contradictions between a policy of large tax cuts, on the one hand, and cuts in services to those in the most dire conditions, on the other

Also, you've shone some light on anti-poverty workers and analysts such as Adele LaTourette, Meara Nigro, Cecilia Zalkind and Raymond Castro, among others, all of whom have something important to add to the discussion: real information and actual facts about what is happening below the poverty line.

These are voices that in our current climate are having a hard time being heard, not just in New Jersey, but nationally. Finally, your article shows that the cuts are eating away at the lower edges of the middle class, not just those already classified as in poverty, and are likely to continue to get worse over the next few years. I'm always glad to see my hometown newspaper covering these issues.

Bruce Springsteen

COLTS NECK [New Jersey]

Original Springsteen Letter

The article that prompted his letter:

As Poverty Rises, NJ Cuts Target Aid

see also  Mr. Big Thing