NJ Spotlight, Feb. 3, 2014

By SCOTT GURIAN

An investigation into the data raises more questions than answers

An in-depth analysis by NJ Spotlight in collaboration with WNYC/NJ Public Radio has discovered multiple irregularities in how funds have been allocated through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program Energy Allocation Initiative — the program at the heart of Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s allegations against the Christie administration.

An examination of the fund shows that despite a scoring system that awarded various towns and cities points for eligibility based on factors such as population size, population density, and previous FEMA claims, Hoboken has been awarded the same amount — $142,080 — as much smaller towns like Mt. Arlington and Old Tappan, neither of which experienced much damage from Sandy or previous storms.

And Hoboken was awarded far less than Nutley, which was allocated $556,000, despite being relatively unscathed by the storm.

Responding to inquiries from NJ Spotlight, a Department of Environmental Protection spokesman said a proper, objective process was followed in the scoring and ranking of these applications, and that it’s ongoing, so some of these awards might still be adjusted before they’re finalized and checks are cut. He said it’s unfair to draw conclusions from the data at this point. But many details about the behind-the-scenes process remain unclear, and the problems seem to extend beyond simply a few errant numbers.

This investigation’s findings could lend credence to Zimmer’s claim that the Christie administration withheld Sandy aid from her city because she didn’t support a redevelopment project. Hoboken had submitted a $1.3 million proposal to purchase a dozen backup generators for use throughout the city, but it was awarded only about one tenth of what it asked for.

A list obtained from the Governor’s Office of Recovery and Rebuilding — the department overseeing the Sandy recovery process — shows that dozens of municipalities have been awarded exactly the same amount as Hoboken, while others got more or less. So at first glance, nothing looks too out of the ordinary. But a closer examination raises questions about whether there might be more than meets the eye.

In addition to questions about Hoboken’s funding, the NJ Spotlight analysis has found that Jersey City — the state’s second largest city — was awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars less than Newark and Elizabeth, cities of comparable size and storm damage. Jersey City’s mayor, Democrat Steven Fulop, has said he’s felt punished in other ways because he didn’t endorse Gov. Chris Christie for reelection last year.

No Easy Answers

Though there’s sure to be speculation, there’s no proof at this point that politics necessarily played a role in state decisions about who got help and who did not in the aftermath of Sandy. That charge has been vociferously denied by the governor’s office and state officials, and an analysis of the data found several examples of towns where Democratic mayors who endorsed Christie applied for aid and didn’t get it.

What does appear to be clear from numerous conversations with involved parties is that despite a series of mandatory briefings and training workshops — where state officials say they did their best to explain the mechanics of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program — the application and decision-making process remained murky and confusing for many.

NJ Spotlight has filed public records requests to obtain copies of letters of intent submitted by a number of municipalities that applied for the program. That has uncovered a wide variety of approaches and styles, with some municipalities submitting a separate proposal for each backup generator, for example, while others lumped their requests into a single LOI. Some representatives of municipalities surveyed said they were unaware of the ranking criteria and might have prepared their applications differently had they been better informed.

Speaking privately, one individual involved with the program said the general feeling was that there was little guidance given to municipalities and that state officials were basically flying by the seats of their pants, struggling to respond to an unprecedented disaster without getting overwhelmed and often figuring things out as they went along. In the end, this individual said, with hardly enough federal money in the program to satisfy the demand, it seemed destined for failure and “everyone got screwed” in the end.

As the governor’s office has rightfully noted in press releases responding to Zimmer’s allegations, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program is not money for direct repair of Sandy damage, but rather aid to help municipalities prepare for future storms.

The HMGP kicks in once the President issues a federal disaster declaration for an area, as Obama did for eight coastal counties in New Jersey after Sandy. The amount of HMGP funding that’s handed out to a particular state is calculated using a formula based on the combined total of FEMA Public assistance, FEMA individual assistance and Small Business Administration loans.

In New Jersey, total Sandy HMGP funding came to around $300 million. It’s worth noting that Hazard Mitigation money does not come out of the $50 billion in Sandy recovery funding Congress authorized. Rather, it’s a separate allocation under the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act.

Responding to Mayor Zimmer’s claims that Sandy funds were “held hostage,” the governor’s office shot out a series of statements noting that Hoboken has received nearly $70 million in storm recovery and rebuilding aid to date, but as noted earlier, this is different from HMGP money. The $70 million figure includes FEMA aid to individuals, federal flood insurance payouts, SBA loans, and grants to local businesses. Much of this money came directly from the federal government — without state officials having a say in the matter — and most of it was aimed at individuals and business owners rather than at Hoboken’s city government.

Even out of the $300 million HMGP pot, two-thirds of the money has been earmarked for individuals rather than local municipalities. Of the six HMGP programs, $100 million is going to help residents elevate their homes, and another $100 million is going to help fund property buyouts. The remainder is split between four grants:

$25 million for the Energy Allocation Initiative to help local governments become more resilient during power outages

$50 million for Local Resiliency Projects, to be handed out to local governments by the counties

$7 million for the Liquid Fuel Resilience Program to provide generators to gas stations along key thoroughfares

$3 million for the Planning Grant Program to help counties with their hazard mitigation plans

To recap, out of $300 million in total HMGP funds the state of New Jersey had to hand out, just $75 million was available for municipalities like Hoboken, and the demand for this money was great. State officials say they received letters of intent from cities and towns asking for funding for mitigation projects totaling some $14 billion.

With the supply and the demand so out of whack, there were sure to be grumblings from some applicants who felt they were worthy but left out, or who weren’t awarded as much funding as they felt they were entitled to. “If you look at our recovery programs in totality,” said New Jersey’s “Storm Czar” Marc Ferzan on a recent call with reporters, “I’m scratching my head a little bit about any community that’s [claiming they’re] getting the short end of the stick other than to say that I understand we’ve got very limited resources at our disposal to date.”

But the initial findings of NJ Spotlight’s continuing investigation seem to suggest that there may be more to this story than simple dissatisfaction.

The HMGP Energy Allocation Initiative is just a small fraction of overall Sandy aid money, but it’s one of the few given directly by the state to local municipalities. In light of recent allegations from Hoboken, Fort Lee, and other places of the governor rewarding allies and punishing political enemies, it bears a close examination, whether or not that’s what actually happened here. NJ Spotlight has provided the administration with detailed questions, and they say they will respond again in the coming days.

PEER, Feb. 3, 2014

Hazard Mitigation Funding Criteria Ignores Municipal Need and Hazard Severity

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Trenton — New Jersey grants to municipalities struggling to rebuild power infrastructure devastated by Super Storm Sandy were unevenly distributed under opaque criteria administered by a private group operating under the direction of the office of Governor Chris Christie, according to documents posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

The end result left big winners and many losers as only a tiny fraction of municipal applications to buy or fix generators serving critical facilities, such as shelters, emergency operations, police and fire stations, got funding.

Just a month before last November’s election, Gov. Christie’s office verbally notified the mayors awarded coveted energy grants from the state Hazard Mitigation Program – the program at the heart of allegations from Mayor Dawn Zimmer of Hoboken.

From the 779 local public agency applications totaling more than $340 million in requests, Gov. Christie’s office selected only 144 applicants, fewer than one in five, and funded only $25 million, around 7% of total expenses.

Projects had to score at least 80 points derived from 12 factors to be eligible for funding but –

** The program was administered by a corporate-funded private nonprofit, called Sustainable Jersey, which is subject to scant external review;
** The funding criteria included grades from several state agencies, such as the Board of Public Utilities and the Department of Environmental Protection, under standards not spelled out, raising questions about their transparency and integrity; and Public notice was limited so as to not attract any uninvited participation.

** Perhaps most significantly, the point system did not explicitly consider the need of the municipality or extent of the hazard to be mitigated. Nor does the state have a system for identifying emergency priorities.

“The Governor’s scoring spreadsheet looks more like a game of bureaucratic bingo than a rational, need-based selection process,” stated New Jersey PEER Director Bill Wolfe, noting the abrupt termination of the state’s main contractor and the growing uncertainty over distribution of Sandy money. “Many of these requests were virtually identical, yet a few were accepted while many others rejected. No wonder our mayors are confused and suspicious.”

The process created distinct losers and winners among applicant cities. For example –

Hoboken applied for the projects totaling less than $1.8 million but was only funded for the smallest one at $136,000;

Newark did even worse, asking for $13.4 million for 9 projects but got only five partially funded for a total award of $822,000; and

By contrast, Rahway asked for approximately $930,000 for eight projects and received more than half–$520,000–for four of them, curiously each with an identical $130,150 price tag.

“With hundreds of vulnerable water supply and sewage systems left unaided, it is not clear how much safer New Jersey will be after all the ‘Hazard Mitigation’ funds are spent,” Wolfe added. “Ironically, the Christie administration put out press releases touting this as a model program but a closer look suggests there is little to brag about here.”

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Look at winners – municipalities that got funded

Compare losers – projects not funded and their scores

Examine Sustainable Jersey backing

See PEER call for federal audit of Jersey Sandy money

New Jersey PEER is a state chapter of a national alliance of state and federal agency resource professionals working to ensure environmental ethics and government accountability

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Salon.com, Feb. 3, 2014

County official confirms to Salon that Sandy-related promise was spiked from Belleville senior center press release

By Josh Eidelson

Chris Christie (Credit: Reuters/Andrew Kelly)

A promise that “a portion of the units will be available” to Sandy-affected seniors was removed from a press release announcing a newly controversial Belleville, N.J. senior center project, a county official confirmed to Salon.

A prior version of the May 29 project press release – still posted on the developer’s website – stated that, “As an added benefit, a portion of the units will be available to assist senior citizens affected by Hurricane Sandy.” In the final version, posted on the website of Essex County, that sentence – the only one mentioning the hurricane — has been replaced with a different one: “Since the project is located in one of the nine counties most impacted by Sandy, the project may assist senior citizens affected by the storm.”

The Belleville senior center has brought a new wave of scrutiny to the Christie administration — which already faced investigations over apparently retaliatory lane closures and allegedly tying Sandy cash to a development project – since a Jan. 28 Star-Ledger story. The paper wrote that Christie “helped channel $6 million in federal Hurricane Sandy recovery dollars” to building the senior center – providing a third of the project’s budget — even though the town “was not particularly hard hit.” Reporter Matt Friedman noted that “statements from the governor and officials from Essex County and Belleville at the project’s unveiling barely mentioned storm recovery, focusing almost exclusively on how the 137-unit housing project would help keep Belleville’s seniors in town.”

Belleville Mayor Raymond Kimble and Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo endorsed Christie at an event 13 days after the May 29 unveiling. “It’s incredible,” Fair Share Housing Center attorney Adam Gordon told Salon, that “getting projects done for political reasons extended to how Sandy funds are spent.”

Essex County Public Information Officer Anthony Puglisi described the differently worded press release on the developer’s site as “an earlier version.” Asked why the prior language had been removed, he told Salon, “It was just changed, that’s all. Just different language. It says the same thing.” But, asked whether there was anything in the previously drafted sentence that was not true, Puglisi said, “You’d need to talk to the developers regarding the funding sources, the other fundraising sources that they received.” Representatives of Franklin Development Group, the Mayor of Belleville and Governor Christie did not respond to Thursday requests for comment.

Asked about the meaning of the original, drafted-and-deleted sentence in the release for that May 29 event, Essex County’s Puglisi told Salon it had meant “if you’re a victim of Hurricane Sandy, you can apply to reside there once the building is done.” Asked whether anything about the project would involve any particular preference towards or attention to those affected by Sandy, Puglisi repeatedly referred such questions to the developer, and noted that the funds provided by Essex County came from a fund devoted to creating affordable housing. Asked who had made the decision to change the line stating that “a portion of the units will be available” to Sandy-affected seniors, Puglisi told Salon, “Press releases go through heavy editing processes, so it was just changed as a matter of course.”

“It’s a reasonable question to know who edited that and why,” argued Fair Share’s Gordon. “It’s as if someone felt that even, you know, a mild mention of having some benefits to people impacted by Sandy was too much.” He charged that it was “not an accident” that Christie made no mention of Sandy in his speech at the unveiling or his quote in the day’s press release. “Someone probably told him, politically, that there were a lot of people in the town who didn’t want anybody else moving there,” said Gordon. Christie told those assembled at the unveiling, “you shouldn’t have to leave the place where you raised your children and lived your lives in order to be able to have affordable housing for yourself as you get older.”

The “impression he gave to people in Belleville,” argued Gordon, was “that in fact this is something that’s just for Belleville.” He noted that the Sandy-impacted area closest to Belleville was the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, “a very diverse community” from which he suggested some Belleville residents may have been particularly averse to welcoming an influx of Sandy-spurred newcomers.

Some local press stories published soon after the project’s unveiling suggest misgivings in Belleville about outsiders’ use of the senior center. County Executive DiVincenzo told the local Observer that although “the priority is going to be for [accepting] Belleville seniors, when you take money from various levels of government, you can’t stop people from outside Belleville from coming in and using the facility [if eligible].” The same month, Belleville resident Eleanor Strollo told the Belleville Times, “Many residents are fearful ‘our own’ will be neglected in being accommodated and that ‘others’ will take precedence. The governor made it clear that wouldn’t be the case, but it does remain to be seen.”

“Every time that we hear things like, you know, ‘this isn’t for people from this town,’” said Gordon, “in New Jersey, that usually has a racial undercurrent.” Gordon added that it would be “really wrong” to direct Sandy-focused funds to comparatively unscathed Belleville, and then take “pains to avoid mentioning” any way the facility could support people from harder-hit, more-diverse areas. “I think it’s really troubling,” Gordon told Salon, that “Christie used federal funds – and federal disaster relief funds – to play into that dynamic.” Asked by a FiOS1 News reporter at the groundbreaking why the senior center project, conceived years earlier, was finally getting off the ground, Mayor Kimble answered, “I think because of our rapport with the governor, and the county exec.”

As Salon has reported, Fair Share Housing Center is also among the groups questioning the Christie administration over data – obtained through a lawsuit – showing stark racial disparities in approvals and rejections of Sandy aid applications from New Jersey residents. “For a governor who says he governs with ‘the spirit of Sandy,’” Gordon told Salon, “he governs with the spirit of Sandy when it helps him politically.”