Christie's problems worsen in New Jersey
By Steve Benen
-
Tue Apr 10, 2012 8:43 AM EDT
Associated Press
April is proving to be an unusually unkind month for New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie (R).
First, Newark's Star-Ledger ran a lengthy, detailed report documenting the
extent to which the governor's legislative proposals, executive orders, and
agency rules were written, at times word for word, by the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC), a shadowy far-right group that seeks to impose a
conservative agenda in state legislatures.
Then, the New York Times helped shine a light on Christie's corporate welfare
practices, in which the governor is handing out lucrative tax credits to
preferred in-state corporations.
Today's revelations, meanwhile, may be the most controversial to date.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey exaggerated when he declared that
unforeseen costs to the state were forcing him to cancel the new train tunnel
planned to relieve congested routes across the Hudson River, according to a
long-awaited report by independent Congressional investigators.
The report by the Government Accountability Office, to be released this
week, found that while Mr. Christie said that state transportation officials
had revised cost estimates for the tunnel to at least $11 billion and
potentially more than $14 billion, the range of estimates had in fact remained
unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting
down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said
the cost would be no more than $10 billion.
Mr. Christie also misstated New Jersey's share of the costs: he said the
state would pay 70 percent of the project; the report found that New Jersey was
paying 14.4 percent. And while the governor said that an agreement with the
federal government would require the state to pay all cost overruns, the report
found that there was no final agreement, and that the federal government had
made several offers to share those costs.
Even at the time, Christie's decision on this project in 2010 was hard to
understand. Conservatives, who've become increasingly hostile towards American
infrastructure improvements, cheered the move, but from a substantive
perspective, the governor's decision was fairly characterized as "destructive
and incredibly foolish."
But this new report casts that decision in an even more damaging light. The
Government Accountability Office is a non-partisan research/audit arm of
Congress, and it's reporting this week that Christie's rationale for his
strange decision wasn't even true. It was a mistake to scrap a major public
works project during a weak economy; it was a bigger mistake to explain the
move with dishonest claims.
Also note, this didn't just hurt New Jersey -- the project was intended to
alleviate congestion between Boston and Washington, D.C.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who requested the GAO investigation, said in a
statement this morning, "This was the most important transportation project of
our time. [The ARC Tunnel project] was critical to the future of New Jersey's
economy and it took years to plan, but Gov. Christie wiped it out with a
campaign of public deception."
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
asburypark-dig...@yahoogroups.com
asburypark-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
asburypark-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
