NJ Spotlight, Jan. 23, 2014

By Tom Johnson

Group petitions BPU for binding mandates, hopes to stop governor, Legislature from diverting clean energy funds

Saying New Jersey is lagging behind many other states in curbing energy use by its businesses and residents, the Sierra Club yesterday said it would ask the state to establish binding mandates to reduce electric and gas consumption by utility customers.

The petition, to be filed with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, reflects unhappiness with the state’s efforts to promote energy efficiency, a goal critics say has been undermined by repeated diversion of more than $1 billion in ratepayers’ money — some of it destined to reduce energy use — to plug holes in the state budget.

The issue has important implications for New Jersey’s consumers and businesses, which pay some of the highest energy bills in the country. The Christie administration has repeatedly made reducing energy bills a top priority, but clean energy advocates complain its actions do not back up its words, particularly when it comes to investing in energy efficiency.

Not only has the administration and Democratic-controlled Legislature diverted money from clean energy programs, but Gov. Chris Christie also pulled out of a regional initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time siphoning off money that would have gone to energy efficiency project to help balance the state budget.

By most accounts, broad investments in energy efficiency projects are the best way to help lower energy bills for consumers, reduce pollution, and potentially create new well-paying jobs in a green economy.

In recent years, however, New Jersey has fallen behind many other states in promoting energy efficiency, through such initiatives as appliance rebates, home weatherization, and energy management programs for both industry and municipalities.

“New Jersey used to be a national leader on utility-sector energy efficiency programs, but has slipped to the middle of the pack,’’ said Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

The petition, which has yet to be filed with the BPU because state offices were closed yesterday in the aftermath of a snowstorm, echoed that point.

“Other states are beating New Jersey to the punch,’’ according to the 16-page petition. “They have set binding targets to boost the energy efficiency investments, thereby securing lower energy bills, job growth, and reduced pollution more profitably than New Jersey can without targets.’’

The mechanism the environmental group urges the BPU to adopt is a so-called Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (EEPS), similar to what New Jersey has adopted to promote new investment in solar technology. The petition urges the state agency to immediately commence a proceeding to establish binding, long-term fully funded targets to require the state’s gas and electric utilities to reduce energy use among its customers.

Targets would include reducing electricity use by 1.5 percent each year and another 1 percent of natural gas use annually, according to the petition. “It’s a doable target,’’ argued Tom Schuster, New Jersey representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign in a teleconference call with reporters.

In contrast, between 2001 and 2011, energy savings in New Jersey averaged less than 0.5 percent of energy generation, an achievement far bettered by neighboring states, such as New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, according to Nadel.

Greg Reinert, a spokesman for the BPU, said the agency was unable to comment on the petition until it had a chance to review the document.

The petition indicates that New Jersey’s current energy efficiency programs have delivered benefits to its resident, noting 12,800 energy efficiency-related new jobs have been created between 2007-2011, while also significantly reducing pollution from fossil fuels, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Still, the petition argues even the BPU recognizes that “current funding levels will not serve the full range of competitive savings’’ for New Jersey customers. In recent years, utility energy efficiency programs have dropped from $124 million in reported expenditures in fiscal year 2010 to just $35 million in fiscal year 2014, according to the petition.

“The status quo is untenable,’’ the petition argued. “There is simply too much unrealized cost savings, public health, and environmental benefit that the board is leaving on the table.’’

WNYC, Jan. 23, 2014

Homeowners, Legislators Had Bitter Complaints About Firm

By Matt Katz, New Jersey Public Radio

The Christie administration has quietly cut its ties to an embattled company that had New Jersey’s biggest contract for getting Sandy victims back in their homes. Homeowners and legislators had widely criticized the company’s performance, taking some of the gloss off Governor Chris Christie’s signature project: Sandy recovery.

Christie officials — who as recently as two weeks ago gave legislators in Trenton no hint that the contract had been cancelled — wouldn’t say on Thursday why the deal with Hammerman and Gainer, or HGI, was terminated more than two years before completion. Last week, Gov. Christie touted the successes of the Sandy recovery at an event on the Jersey Shore.

HGI won its contract last May shortly after its New Jersey law firm, Capehart Scatchard, made a $25,000 donation to the Republican Governors Association, which is now headed by Christie. The RGA contributed $1.7 million to Christie’s re-election campaign.

The state was to pay HGI $68 million in fees to administer a $780 million Sandy program. But the Christie administration terminated that contract in December, and the termination took effect — unannounced — on Monday. Documents posted on a state website say the company was to be paid $10.5 million as an "unpaid balance" — and for work performing during a "transition period" following termination.

Among the various programs implemented after Sandy, HGI’s Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) grant program, which provided up to $150,000 per home for reconstruction, was widely panned. Homeowners complained of long wait-lists, lack of transparency, stonewalling, and lost paperwork. Much of this criticism surfaced during legislative hearings over the last several months.

HGI was also criticized for how it implemented a home reconstruction program in Louisiana after Katrina, according to the Wall Street Journal. Company officials have said they were improving operations.

At a hearing in Trenton earlier this month, Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Richard Constable III was asked about the performance of HGI in New Jersey. But his answers did not indicate that the company was no longer operating in the state.

On Thursday, Lisa M. Ryan, a spokeswoman for Constable, said: "We’ve recently concluded our relationship with HGI as New Jersey transitions to the next phase of disaster recovery." Ryan did not answer a question about what company, if any, is now running HGI’s programs for Sandy victims. Nor did she say why the contract was terminated.

Likewise, Cherie A. Pinac, the chief of operating officer of HGI, would not disclose the reasons for the termination of the contract, but said it was by mutual agreement. "Under the terms of the contract, I’m not authorized to make a statement," Pinac said in a phone interview from her office in Louisiana.

Christie made an announcement about a new after-school program at an elementary school in Camden on Thursday afternoon, but he did not take questions from reporters.

The termination of the state’s biggest Sandy contract comes as two major scandals loom over Christie’s political career: the charge that Christie officials threatened to cut Sandy relief funds to the town of Hoboken unless its mayor supported a redevelopment deal — a charge the administration adamantly denies; and investigations into Christie’s aides ordering George Washington Bridge lane closures to exact political revenge — something the governor says he knew nothing about.

CounterPunch, Jan. 23, 2014

By Linn Washington Jr.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s Bridgegate defense of being misled by staff members resembles a defense advanced in 1999 by another once top Republican NJ official to distance himself from a his role in a contentious 1990s-era scandal that roiled the Garden State: racial profiling by NJ state troopers that targeted minorities for illegal enforcement.

Christie’s defense distancing himself from Bridgegate pivots on his contention that some of his top personal staff and top political appointees kept him totally in the dark about intrigues behind the gridlock that disrupted the small town of Fort Lee last September. “Unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge,” Christie declared.

In 1999 Peter G. Verniero defended his failures as NJ’s Attorney General to forthrightly address racial profiling by troopers with the claim that he was deceived about profiling. Verniero played an ‘I-was-misled’ card.

Verniero declared that top state trooper officials – under his direct command – deceived him just like Chris Christie’s current claim that members of his executive staff deceived him.

NJ Governor Christie Todd Whitman, a Republican, elevated Verniero into the AG slot and then onto the NJ Supreme Court after he served as Whitman’s Chief of Staff.

Current NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s now ex-Deputy Chief of Staff – Bridget Kelly – is purportedly one of those at the center of the Bridgegate controversy. Christie’s bid to elevate his current Chief of Staff to NJ’s Attorney General is now on hold due to Bridgegate.

Peter Verniero claimed he downplayed allegations and evidence of biased enforcement because he accepted assertions from trusted underlings that widespread complaints about profiling were meritless. Verniero claimed he discovered those assertions were deceptive … curiously only after an April 1998 turnpike shooting of three young minority men that triggered another national outrage about trooper profiling.

Verniero claimed he didn’t consider profiling a big deal despite years of extensive news coverage about abuses by NJ troopers, repeated reports documenting profiling and a pivotal state court ruling against profiling that Verniero appealed as AG.

Gov. Christie claimed he downplayed the Fort Lee imbroglio because he accepted assertions from trusted underlings that charges of improprieties about George Washington Bridge lane closures were meritless. Christie claimed he discovered those assertions were deceptive … curiously only after the early January public release of damning emails including an exchange between top Christie staff member Kelly and David Wildstein, a ranking political appointee at the bridge authority.

Christie claimed he didn’t consider the lane closure controversy a big deal despite elected officials sending him complaints that detailed suspected irregularities, his presumed awareness of extensive local NJ news coverage about irregularities surrounding the closure controversy and legislative inquiries last fall into those closures that prompted the resignation of Wildstein, a childhood friend of Christie.

When Verniero offered his ‘I was misled’ defense during testimony before NJ state legislative committees, many legislators found Verniero’s testimony misleading and unconvincing citing discrepancies between Verniero’s verbal testimony and written documentation he provided legislators.

Although Verniero avoided impeachment removal from the NJ Supreme Court for that misleading legislative testimony and ensuing taint resulted in him serving only a few rocky years on NJ’s highest court.

The ethical cloud over Verniero for misleading NJ legislators and failing to address racial profiling did not define that well-connected Republican operative as damaged-goods in Christie’s eyes. Christie has employed Verniero repeatedly in recent years to help dissipate controversies erupting over Christie’s administrative actions/inactions, some that have included a racial-stain similar to that racial profiling controversy.

In early 2013 Christie appointed Verniero to co-chair a task force directed to examine violence related issues in NJ. Critics accused Christie of playing politics with gun violence during his reelection year, a critique Christie denied. The all-male composition of that task force reeked of Christie’s ‘Ole Boy Network’ preferences.

Two years before that 2013 appointment Christie retained Verniero (and Verniero’s hi-end law firm) to defend against a court challenge to Christie’s cutbacks in public school funding. Christie’s injection of Verniero into that school funding battle exposed both the often overlooked staunch conservative streak of Christie – who is projected as a political moderate – and an earlier role Verniero played in advancing Christie’s ideological agenda.

Christie has waged classic conservative campaigns to cut public school funding (and bash teachers’ unions) along with efforts to decrease racially integrated housing.

One Christie campaign slashed funding for family planning clinics due to his objection to provision of reproductive services. Those funding cuts crippled the ability of clinics to provide basic medical care/health screenings for low-and-moderate income families. Another Christie campaign involved repeated efforts to shut down the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing – an organization whose work includes increasing housing options for minorities.

Late last fall, when Bridgegate was percolating, a lawsuit forced the Christie Administration to release documents on relief aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy. Those Christie Administration documents showed that aid requests from black and Latino homeowners were rejected at rates far higher than whites. Those documents also detailed other suspect practices around relief aid.

Christie, with his characteristic bluster, acidly dismissed that evidence of apparent discriminatory distribution of Sandy relief aid as mere “statistical anomalies.” Christie denied making relief awards based on considerations of “race or ethnicity.”

Further, Christie denigrated the Latino, liberal and black organizations behind that lawsuit as “hack” groups simply looking for attention. One of those ‘hack’ groups was NJ’s NAACP branch, the oldest civil rights organization in New Jersey. The NAACP has consistently criticized Christie for the limited diversity on his personal staff and in his top political appointments.

Parallel to state and federal investigations into Bridgegate is a federal probe examining Christie’s use of $25-million in Sandy relief aid for a Jersey Shore tourism marketing campaign in 2013. That ad campaign was altered to feature Christie and his family. Those federally funded marketing ads ran at the same time Christie was running for reelection as a compassionate, effective administrator. Christie’s office stonewalled media requests last fall during his reelection drive for information on that marketing campaign.

One of the first statewide controversies that soiled Christie was his sacking of the only black member of the NJ Supreme Court. Christie refused to reappoint that respected jurist, the first such refusal in modern New Jersey history.

Christie sought influence over NJ’s historically non-partisan supreme court reportedly due to his dislike of two of that court’s decades-old rulings: one that ordered increased state funding for public schools, particularly schools in poor (predominately minority) areas and another ruling to end segregated housing. Those twin rulings occurred before that black justice joined the NJ Supreme Court.

One prominent reaction to Christie’s sacking of that black justice was the mass resignation of the independent body that screened NJ judicial nominees. Christie repopulated that body with all Republicans (and all whites) placing Peter Verniero as that body’s new chair.

While Bridgegate centers on allegations that those lane closures were political retaliation against Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor for failing to endorse Christie’s reelection, some are speculating that a root of Bridgegate lies with retaliation against Fort Lee area Democratic state legislative members for their failures to support Christie’s partisan plans for NJ’s judiciary.

NJ state and federal investigations will determine what Gov. Chris Christie knew about Bridgegate and when he knew it. What’s known at this point is the ‘Who’ of Chris Christie: a bellicose bully.

Linn Washington Jr. is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, DAVE LINDORFF, LORI SPENCER and CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net

PBS has put an excellent free video online, called “Slavery by Another Name.” It documents the 80-year period from the end of the Civil War (1865) to the end of World War II (1945) during which blacks in the South were forced to work for subsistence wages or no wages — and had no recourse through the courts or even the media.
It’s another shameful period in our history that few of us, black or white, know much about because it is not taught in our schools.

ClimateProgress, Jan. 23, 2014

By KatieValentine
Latinos strongly support efforts to tackle climate change and protect the environment, a new poll has found.

The poll, which was completed for the NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] by polling firm Latino Decisions, surveyed 805 registered Latino voters and found that about 9 out of 10 respondents favored taking action on climate change, with 92 percent calling for more use of renewable energy and 87 percent agreeing with limits on power plant pollution. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said that it was “extremely to very important” for the government to tackle air pollution, and 75 percent said it was “extremely to very important” for the government to take action on climate change.

That’s compared to a 2013 poll also done by Latino Decisions that found 78 percent of Latinos thought it was “very to extremely important” for Congress to pass an immigration bill with a path to citizenship in 2013.

Matt Barreto, co-founder of Latino Decisions, said on a press call Thursday that compared to Latino polling on health care, the economy, and education reform, support for climate and environment initiatives from the respondents was the highest he’d seen.

“We have not seen this degree of consistency and this degree of high support among Latino electorate,” except in polls on immigration reform, he said.

Barreto said it wasn’t just a particular group of Latinos who supported these initiatives either. Regardless of class, country of origin, generation in the U.S., and even political party, respondents cited strong support for action on climate change and environmental issues. Support was lower among Republican Latinos than Democrats, but was still strong: 68 percent of Republican Latinos said it was important for the government to tackle climate change, and 54 percent of Republicans supported presidential action to reduce carbon emissions.

The poll also looked at reasons why respondents felt the way they did about environmental issues. It found that a sense of duty to future generations — a desire to leave their children and grandchildren a healthy, habitable planet — and concerns over health issues that are associated with high pollution levels drove many Latinos to back climate and environmental initiatives.

“It really embodies and embraces the American dream to have something, and to leave something better for next generations,” Barreto said.

Latinos have good reason to care about the health effects of pollution, in particular — about half the nation’s Latino population lives in regions that often violate clean air rules, and Latinos are three times more likely to die from asthma than other racial or ethnic groups, according to the National Hispanic Medical Association. Poor Latinos are particularly at risk — according to a 2011 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, nearly one in four low-income Hispanic or Puerto-Rican children in the U.S. has been diagnosed with asthma, compared to about one in 13 middle-class or wealthy white children.

Latinos are one of the fastest-growing minority groups in the U.S. and are becoming a key voting block, pursued by both Republicans and Democrats. But they aren’t the only minority group in the U.S. that polls strongly on environmental issues. A 2010 study from the Yale Project on Climate Change noted that “in many cases, minorities are equally as supportive, and often more supportive of national climate and energy policies, than white Americans.” The study found that 89 percent of blacks, in particular, supported regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, compared to 78 percent of whites.

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