NJ News Commons, Feb. 5, 2014

by Mary Mann

A second round of Sandy aid was announced by the State of New Jersey on Monday, February 3, and the Citizens Campaign wants to help you parse the information and solicit public comment.

Working with the New Jersey Recovery Fund, the Citizen’s Campaign will hold a conference call/webinar on Friday February 7 at 1 p.m.. Stacy McCormack from American Littoral Society and Kevin Walsh from Fair Share Housing Center will be on the call to provide more information about the plan and provide tips on testifying or submitting comments. Find out more about the webinar here.

Three public meetings will be held on February 11 from 4-7 p.m. at Richard Stockton College in Galloway, February 12 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at NJIT in Newark, and February 13 from 4-7 p.m. at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft.

Those interested in speaking at the public hearings must register online at sandy.publiccomment or by mail to the attention of Gabrielle Gallagher, NJ Department of Community Affairs, 101 South Broad Street, P.O. Box 800, Trenton, NJ 08625. All comments must be received on or before March 5, 2014, at 5:00 p.m. to be considered.

For more information about New Jersey’s Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts or to download a copy of the State’s Action Plan and related amendments, visit http://www.nj.gov/dca or request a copy at the above mentioned address. Both Action Plan Amendments (Substantial Amendments #6 and #7) are available on the DCA’s website http://www.nj.gov/dca.

New Brunswick Today, Feb. 5, 2014

Sources: Boraie Development Reneged on Agreement to Sell Affordable Condos in Spring St. Highrise

By Charlie Kratovil

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—The Christie administration may have made false claims about a local developer when they announced $4.8 million in Hurricane Sandy relief funds went to accelerate the construction of a luxury apartment tower planned for Somerset Street.

The tower had been approved by the city’s Planning Board eight months before Hurricane Sandy struck.

Contrary to claims made by the Christie administration, it appears that the recipient of the recovery funds, Boraie Development LLC, has never before provided affordable housing in New Jersey.

Boraie Development has promised to rent 48 of the tower’s 238 apartments at "affordable" rates, qualifying the project for a numerous city and state tax breaks, as well as the Sandy funds. The project also includes a parking garage, fitness center, and retail space.

The new building, dubbed "Somerset Mews," was the first of 37 projects to break ground with the help of Sandy recovery funds.

Boraie has developed a movie theater in Newark, several office and retail spaces in downtown New Brunswick, as well as a 25-story luxury condominium complex, and the building that houses the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Department.

However, it appears that the firm has not yet offerred affordable housing units in New Jersey.

In fact, multiple sources say the company actually reneged on a deal to offer affordable condominiums in One Spring Street, a luxury highrise condo complex just a few blocks away from the Somerset Mews construction site.

The administration erroneously claimed that Boraie Development had experience providing "affordable housing opportunities to NJ residents" in a press release announcing the groundbreaking of the controversial project that received Sandy aid.

In the September 23 release, the state touts that Boraie "has worked successfully in the past to construct and sell Spring Street Plaza, a 120-unit condominium project that provided affordable housing opportunities to NJ residents."

But multiple sources tell NBToday that Boraie requested and received affordable housing funds for the Spring Street project, then later decided against selling any of the units in the luxury building at affordable prices.

According to property records, the first 103 condominiums were sold for an average of $524,448.

Sources say the developer later returned the affordable housing money back to the state government, who agreed to write it off as a $15 million interest-free, "construction only loan."

"HMFA provided a construction only loan to the Boriae Development, LLC for the creation of 120 for-sale units," said Department of Community Affairs spokeswoman Tammori Petty. "Boriae Development, LLC has repaid the agency as agreed."

Representatives for the NJ Department of Community Affairs, the NJ Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, and Boraie Development did not return phone and email messages asking about the discrepancy.

And that wasn’t the only promise the developer broke when it built the highrise.

As we reported in 2012, it was not until after the Spring Street project was finished that city officials discovered it had 25 less parking spaces than had been promised in the attached seven-story parking garage.

In part because of this broken promise, the building’s deck does not offer any public parking spaces. It was originally supposed to include 86 metered spaces for the general public to replace a surface parking lot that was originally on the site.

Boraie and his family are among New Brunswick’s most generous political contributors, and some of the most powerful property owners in the city. They are also involved in major development projects in Newark and Atlantic City, each one recipients of millions in various government subsidies.

The Christie administration’s September 23 press statement lists various amounts of governmental assistance going to Somerset Mews, the controversial 16-story luxury building under construction. In total, the amounts of aid listed exceed the total development cost of the project by $3.6 million.

"Aside from the $4.8 million [in Sandy relief funds], the HMFA provided Somerset Mews with $60.5 million in funding through its Multifamily Conduit Bond Program and awarded the project federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits that will generate approximately $5.8 million in equity," reads the questionable release.

"The NJEDA has awarded the project $15.3 million in funding through the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit Program. "

Simple math shows that something just does not add up.

According to the release, the government loans, tax credits, and direct assistance totaled $86.4 million. The same release listed the total development cost as $82.8 million.

The Department of Community Affairs did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy or the alleged inaccuracies in the press release.

"Let me look into this for you tomorrow," emailed the state spokesperson on Monday.

Anthony Marchetta, head of the NJ Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, did not respond to messages left via email and phone.

Marchetta’s cousin, Russell Marchetta, is the spokesman for New Brunswick Mayor James Cahill, a frequent recipient of political donations from the Boraie family.

Since we reported on the Somerset Mews Sandy funding award last week, a story that was first broken by NBC New York’s investigative reporter Chris Glorioso, many readers were shocked that such a large aid package was going to support a project in a neighborhood and city not seriously damaged by the superstorm.

The Governor has been on the defensive about this and several other questionable uses of Sandy funding, as well as other high-profile scandals rapidly unfolding as Christie begins a second four-year term.

On Monday, Christie said he would start to shift the administration’s focus when it came to spending federal rebuilding funds.

A statement issued by Christie announced the state’s intent "to amend the current New Jersey Disaster Recovery Action Plan to provide $17 million in tenant-based housing vouchers for low-income families and to create a $5 million Lead Hazard Reduction Program to protect children from increased lead poisoning threats in Sandy-damaged homes."

NJ Spotlight, Feb. 5, 2014

By Mark J. Magyar

With subpoenaed documents trickling in to investigators and a third Christie appointee taking the Fifth Amendment, legal experts are debating which charges Christie appointees are likely to face, how evidence of a coverup could bolster a corruption prosecution, and whether a RICO conspiracy charge could be used to tie together the alleged Christie administration scandals.

From a legal standpoint, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s allegation that Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno transmitted a threat from Gov. Chris Christie to withhold Sandy aid from her city unless she pushed through a high-rise development represented by the law firm of David Samson, the governor’s former campaign counsel and current Port Authority chairman, is more serious than the Bridgegate allegations.

“The Bridgegate allegations could potentially be prosecuted under state law as official misconduct, but there are still a lot of dots to be connected for there to be serious liability under federal law,” said Christopher Adams, a Colts Neck lawyer who serves as vice president of the Criminal Defense Lawyers Association of New Jersey. “The Hoboken allegations are more serious. You heard nothing from the U.S. Attorney’s Office until Hoboken happened.

“Twenty-four hours after Zimmer made her allegation, members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI met with her in their office on a Sunday,” Adams said. “Sandy is an issue of criminal bribery. There could be a number of potential crimes, not the least of which could be extortion. The idea that the state would hold up the administration of federal funds unless the governor’s office could exact some benefit for itself or for a client of Samson is very serious. There were countless criminal indictments made on a lot less than that during Christie’s years as U.S. Attorney.”

That doesn’t mean Bridgegate isn’t serious, though, and politically it could be more damaging to Christie’s 2016 presidential hopes, as five Christie appointees subpoenaed in Bridgegate already have resigned or been fired. Based on evidence contained in emails subpoenaed by the Assembly Transportation Committee, legal experts agree that at least two former Christie appointees are already facing serious charges in Bridgegate.

While misconduct for political purposes is more difficult to prove than personal corruption, Bridget Kelly, Gov. Chris Christie’s former deputy chief of staff who evidently ordered the controversial George Washington Bridge lane closures, and David Wildstein, Christie’s political enforcer at the Port Authority who is openly angling for immunity, are likely to face misconduct or similar charges punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Both Wildstein and Kelly have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, as has Bill Stepien, Christie’s former campaign manager.

Documents subpoenaed by the Legislature’s Joint Select Committee on Investigations and/or the U.S. Attorney’s Office from the governor’s office, Christie’s reelection campaign, and 17 current and former Christie appointees could be critical, legal experts said, in establishing evidence of a coverup, which would constitute awareness of guilt and, therefore, bolster the strength of any corruption case.

The failure of state officials, especially lawyers, to report or stop cases of wrongdoing that reach the level of felony crimes — which Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye believed to be the case with the secret closure of traffic lanes leading into the George Washington Bridge as an act of political retaliation — could be prosecuted not only as official misconduct, but also under the seldom-used “misprision of felony” statute.

And while legal experts emphasize that it is too early to judge where U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman is heading, there has been some discussion that the combination of Bridgegate and its coverup, the withholding or award of federal Sandy aid for political purposes, the firing of a county prosecutor in order to squelch an indictment of a Republican county sheriff, and the misuse of power on behalf of politically connected lawyers and developers — if proven — could be tied together in a single case.

Sam Adam Jr., the Chicago defense attorney who defended impeached Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, was the first to suggest publicly that if the underlying charges can be proved, a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case could be made by the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey similar to the RICO charge brought against Blagojevich, his governor’s office, and his campaign fundraising operation. However, RICO cases are complex and difficult to prove.

Reid Schar, the former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Blagojevich case — who is currently serving as special counsel to the Legislature’s Joint Select Committee on Investigations that issued subpoenas to Christie’s governor’s office, reelection campaign, and 15 Christie appointees — dropped the racketeering charge against Blagojevich after the first jury convicted the governor only on a single count of lying to the FBI. Without the RICO charge, Schar’s streamlined case in the second trial brought convictions on 17 counts of conspiracy, attempted bribery, extortion and wire fraud.

§

Robert Del Tufo, the former U.S. Attorney and New Jersey Attorney-General, touched off a debate on MSNBC last month with his suggestion that the Christie team could eventually face RICO charges. But he backed off that conclusion as premature in an interview yesterday, saying he did not want to prejudge Fishman’s investigation and praising the U.S. Attorney for “going about this in a very professional way. You don’t have to stand up and crow about what you’re doing.”

In fact, reporters only learned that Fishman had recently issued a subpoena to the governor’s office because Christie disclosed it during his Monday night interview on New Jersey 101.5 FM.

Del Tufo marveled at the breadth of the allegations of corruption, conflict of interest, and coverup involving an interrelated cast of Christie appointees and allies that have emerged in the month since the January 8 bombshell disclosure of Kelly’s email telling Wildstein it was “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

“This may be much broader than we think,” Del Tufo said. He pointed to allegations that Kelly in the governor’s office directed the Port Authority’s Wildstein to close the bridge lanes, that Port Authority Chairman David Samson tried to intervene to block the public disclosure of the story behind the lane closures, and that Port Authority money went into a study that recommended a development in Hoboken that Samson’s law firm represented — and that the Christie administration allegedly pressured Zimmer to support.

The alleged threat to withhold federal Sandy aid from Hoboken if Zimmer refused is the flip side of the allegation that Christie pushed through Sandy funding for a senior citizen complex in Belleville, which had no Sandy damage, to encourage Belleville’s Democratic mayor to endorse him for reelection.

Del Tufo said he was particularly troubled by the allegations made by former Hunterdon County Prosecutor Ben Barlyn in a civil lawsuit currently working its way through state Superior Court. Barlyn charges that Christie’s former Attorney General, Paula Dow, took over his office in 2010 and improperly fired him and his assistants to squelch a corruption case against Hunterdon County Sheriff Deborah Trout, a Christie GOP ally, that four jurors testified was proper.

“Clearly, there’s something wrong here. The charges in all of these cases involve abuses of power, generally for political purposes,” Del Tufo said.

Del Tufo noted that public officials could be found guilty of violating the Hobbs Act of 1951 – which, like RICO, was originally enacted to crack down on labor racketeers — for obtaining a payment or benefit to which they were not entitled. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Hobbs Act’s “under color of official right provision does not require that the public official take steps to induce the extortionate payment: It can be said that ‘the coercive element is provided by the public office itself’” — in this case, the perceived power of the governor’s office.

While the U.S. Attorney’s investigation, which would go to a grand jury before charges are made public, could build slowly for months behind closed doors, the Legislature’s Special Committee on Investigations will be bringing its witnesses in to testify publicly.

The panel, chaired by Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) and Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), is focusing first on Bridgegate, but its broad charter allows it to branch out to investigate any abuses of power or the coverup of those abuses, by the Christie administration, as the far-reaching subpoenas it issued in mid-January demonstrated.

The U.S. Attorney’s investigation and the Legislature’s inquiry could very well extend into 2015, based on the experience of the Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Whitewater investigations in Washington and the Blagojevich case which ran for three years from hearings and investigations to impeachment to trials. “There is nothing comparable in scope in modern New Jersey history,” said Robert F. Williams, Associate Director of Rutgers-Camden Law School’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

New Jersey’s Bridgegate saga and other alleged Christie administration scandals could play out differently than the federal cases because the New Jersey Legislature does not have the powers Congress has to grant immunity to witnesses, legal experts noted.

That is why Kelly and Stepien not only indicated they would follow Wildstein’s example in taking the Fifth Amendment when called to testify before the Wisniewski-Weinberg committee, but also cited both their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure in refusing to produce documents, emails, and other materials demanded by the committee because they could be used by the U.S. Attorney’s Office to build a case against them.

§

The legislative committee, whose counsel Schar met with U.S. Attorney Fishman Saturday to discuss how the legislative inquiry could proceed without interfering with the federal investigation, is expected to challenge Kelly’s and Stepien’s right to withhold documentary evidence, even if they refuse to answer questions when called to testify.

Proving a connection in the planning and execution of Bridgegate between Stepien, who served as Christie’s political enforcer within the administration before moving over to the campaign, and his protégé Kelly, who replaced him as deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs, would be the critical link in tying both the governor’s office and the campaign to the George Washington Bridge lane closures.

Christie said he removed Stepien from his consulting position with the Republican Governors Association and his planned chairmanship of the New Jersey Republican Party for the “callous indifference” he showed to the Bridgegate lane closures in after-the-fact emails to Wildstein. But Christie did not fire his press secretary, Michael Drewniak, for profanity-laced emails that were worse than Stepien’s, leading political insiders to question privately whether Christie suspected Stepien had a hand in Kelly’s Bridgegate directive — yet another reason for Christie not to question Stepien or Kelly before firing them so he would not have to know.

Establishing the motive for the secret George Washington Bridge lane closures is critical because “unlike typical corruption cases, it’s not clear with Bridgegate that there was any money passing hands,” said Aidan O’Connor, who served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for 18 years, including the Christie years, before joining PashmanStein in Hackensack.

Turning a Profit

Most state laws covering bribery, extortion, and official misconduct are written primarily to prohibit public officials from personally profiting or helping friends or family members to profit from decisions they make in their official duties, rather than from the misuse of their governmental position to advance their political aims or those of the leaders they serve.

If the bridge lanes were closed and traffic was snarled for four days in Fort Lee as retaliation against Democratic Mayor Mark Sokolich for refusing to endorse Christie for reelection, prosecutors would have to get the jury to “buy into the idea that political advancement and maintaining political position has a real tangible value,” O’Connor said.

“Do people say this is politics as usual or does it cross the line?” he said. “You have to look at it as a prosecutor would. Is this something as a society we don’t want? The general intent of the law is to go after corrupt behavior. You have to ask whether this crosses the line from hardball politics to misuse of state power. You would have to say this is not typical hardball politics, but misusing the levels of the state to maintain power.”

Similarly, while Zimmer’s allegations that Lt. Governor Guadagno threatened to hold up Sandy aid if she did not support a politically connected high-rise are more serious, the same question is involved, said Michael J. Sullivan, a former federal public defender who is now a partner with Coughlin Duffy in Morristown.

“Clearly, conditioning the payment of federal aid that is otherwise appropriately due and owing, and conditioning it on some other action is improper and illegal,” Sullivan said. “On the other hand, there is a certain amount of horse trading allowed in politics.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is going to want corroborating evidence before bringing a “she said, she said” case simply pitting Zimmer’s word against Guadagno’s, the lawyers agreed.

Blurring the Lines

The problem of the blurring of the line between governmental and political activity is not unique to New Jersey. Kelly and other officials switched from their governmental email to their personal email when they were exchanging political communications, including those pertaining to Bridgegate. But Adams, the Colts Neck defense attorney, noted that “Karl Rove carried two blackberries. One was his official government one, the other was his political one,” and that was while he was on the White House payroll as President George W. Bush’s in-house political operative — a position similar to the one Stepien filled as Christie’s deputy chief of staff between the 2009 and 2013 campaigns.

However, New Jersey laws and ethics statutes clearly bar government officials from doing political business on work time — which is why Stepien left the governor’s office to work on the campaign.

O’Connor noted that the misallocation of federal money, particularly in amounts totally more than $10,000, is illegal. That is important because the Port Authority, whose allocation of funding to projects favored by the Christie administration, receives sizable amounts of federal money, and because federal Sandy aid played a central role in both the Hoboken case and the controversial construction of a senior citizen center in Belleville, which suffered little Sandy damage, as an alleged inducement to the mayor to endorse Christie for reelection.

If Sandy money was misallocated for political purposes, the check itself would constitute evidence of federal wire fraud, O’Connor said, as would any improper orders communicated by telephone. Almost half of Blagojevich’s conviction counts were for wire fraud.

§

While the Bridgegate lane closures could constitute interference with interstate commerce or violations of the Civil Rights Act, Sullivan said he “would go after creating a hazardous condition. It’s no different than if you went down there and put 55-gallon drums full of rocks in the middle of the highway and people could get run off the road. That’s official wrongdoing.”

Sullivan said the slow unfolding of the Bridgegate scandal over the past four months makes it unlikely that key principals will face indictment for lying under oath to federal law enforcement officials or the FBI. “By the time law enforcement people were doing interviews, they knew what was going on so they’re not going to get caught that way,” he said.

But Adams said the subpoenaed documents could provide invaluable evidence of a coverup.

“The coverup is always easier to prove,” Adams said. “In fact, the coverup often strengthens the prosecution’s ability to prove the original crime they are covering up because a coverup is evidence of consciousness of guilt. It’s what you do after what could have been an accident. If you hide the bloody clothes or erase documents, that is evidence of guilt. If you did nothing wrong and did not believe you had committed a crime, you wouldn’t take those steps.

“But if you know an investigation is imminent or pending and you try to cover up evidence or make sure everybody gets their stories straight, that’s evidence of guilt.” The cliché is true, Adams said: “The coverup is worse than the crime.”

NJ Spotlight, Feb. 4, 2014

Marc Ferzan, executive director of the New Jersey Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, aka the "storm czar."

New Jersey released its long-anticipated Sandy Recovery Action Plan yesterday, detailing how it would like to spend the second wave of federal Sandy recovery aid — some $1.4 billion – in what reads like a lengthy "honey-do" list of lingering Sandy repairs: Fix homes, shore up the coastline, promote tourism.

A bit less than a third of the funds are slated to go to homeowners currently on wait lists for grants. Another $100 million would be used to buy and demolish homes that flood repeatedly. There’s also $5 million to create a new tourism campaign, far less than the $25 million spent on last year’s "Stronger than the Storm" ads.

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration says the money will be used to replenish programs that are working, but are oversubscribed.

In addition, the state wants to earmark $535 million for infrastructure projects that would reduce future flood damage or minimize power outages during storms.

But even with the additional resources, demand for the recovery funds will outweigh their supply, cautioned Marc Ferzan, the executive director of the Governor’s Office of Recovery and Rebuilding.

The state has identified $19 billion in unmet needs across the housing, infrastructure and economic development sectors.

"We have very difficult decisions to make in terms of allocating the $1.4 billion," Ferzan said.

A third funding allocation is expected, he added, though it may go entirely to the Rebuild by Design competition.

The plan “represents a step forward in both resiliency language and public involvement,” said Chris Sturm, Senior Director of State Policy at NJ Future, “but misses key steps needed to ensure taxpayer dollars are wisely spent.”

Among those steps, she said, are more funding for transportation, water and energy infrastructure and well as more emphasis on planning efforts on the community level.

Meanwhile, housing advocates complained that it’s more of the same as the first round, which they think underserved renters and didn’t get to people who needed it most.

"The new plan doubles down on Christie’s failed Sandy strategy," said Adam Gordon, a staff attorney for the Fair Share Housing Center, in a press release. "It provides a road map for more political spending over real relief that meets the needs of people most impacted by Sandy."

Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club of NJ said the plan “continues to ignore federal requirements for funding, including action on climate change, adopting more efficient building codes and implementing green infrastructure.”

"Noting that there was not enough consideration of sea-level rise…," Tittel called for requiring buildings in flood-hazard areas to be elevated higher than the level currently required by the state, which currently set at 1 foot above what’s called for on FEMA flood maps. He said the required elevation should be 2, 3 or even 4 feet higher than the federal standard

Residents and stakeholders now have 30 days to review and submit comments on the plan before the state submits it to the federal government for approval, which could take up to 60 more days. The state will also hold three public hearings on the proposed plan, on February 11 at Stockton University in Galloway, February 12 at NJIT in Newark and February 13 at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft.

Though discussion of the action plan was the stated purpose of Ferzan’s phone call with reporters on Monday, most of the participants were more interested in asking about other issues pertaining to the administration’s handling of the recovery effort.

There were several questions about the recent firing of HGI, the state’s largest private contractor, which had been criticized for its handling of the claims process to get Sandy survivors back in their homes. The administration quietly cut ties with the firm back in December, but never made an announcement, raising concerns about whether something improper may have been swept under the rug.

Ferzan called the termination a “mutual agreement” and said the administration had severed the contract because it saw “opportunities for efficiencies.”

He was also asked about recent media reports that portions of Sandy aid had gone to build a senior center in Belleville and luxury apartments in New Brunswick, places that suffered relatively minor damage in the storm.

Ferzan responded that such projects were needed to replace housing stock that had been destroyed in other, nearby Sandy-affected areas. And he said the administration chose these projects because it had a deadline for spending the aid money. These projects were “shovel ready,” so they could get started right away, he said. Any contention that politics has played a role in determining which municipalities get disaster recovery dollars, he said, was unequivocally wrong.

“There is nothing that is more highly regulated than federal disaster grants programs,” he said. “Everything must be documented. Everything is subject to review by agency auditors.”

When asked about making the state’s internal decision-making processes for grant programs more readily available to the public, Ferzan cautioned against going overboard.

“It’s not that the administration doesn’t want to be transparent,” he said, but “we can’t just throw out reams of raw data.” He said officials were trying to balance being transparent with not giving out “too much information.”

Climate Progress, Feb. 4, 2014

Boston, Massachusetts.
CREDIT: Shutterstock

By Jeff Spross

A new report says the northeastern U.S. could cut its carbon dioxide emissions in half — just by taking advantage of technology that’s already available.

“It’s really about heating buildings and powering transportation,” said Jamie Howland, the director of the Climate Energy Analysis Center at ENE, and the report’s lead author. “Those are two things that have traditionally been done directly by fossil fuels.”

CREDIT: ENE EnergyVision report

The ENE EnergyVision report covers Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey. It notes that over the last decade, oil and coal collapsed as power sources for the electrical grids of those states. Hydroelectric, other renewables, nuclear, and natural gas rose to take their place, making electrical power there greener. So simply switching things like building heat and transportation over to electric power — using technology that’s already commercialized — could deliver huge gains.

“If you just hypothetically did that, greenhouse gas emissions would be cut in half. I don’t think most people realize that,” Howland said. “You get cost reductions in many cases. And you get those today, with today’s electricity generated by natural gas.”

Beyond that, combining such a move with a big push onto renewables to power the electrical grid, and the northeast’s emissions could drop 75 percent by 2050. Here are the key points:

Building electrification. Lots of homes and businesses in the northeast rely on natural gas for heating. But thirty-five percent don’t have access to natural gas infrastructure, and run on oil or propane. Expanded the natural gas infrastructure would be considerably expensive, but, as Howland points out, “everyone has an electric wire running to their house.”

Electric heat pumps have advanced significantly in recent years, they’re now far more effective and efficient than previous electrical heating/cooling systems, and they’re widely commercialized. “They’re all over in the southeastern U.S. and the mid-Atlantic,” said Howland. “But not in the northern climates because they just didn’t perform efficiently. And now they do. Some folks I work with in northern Vermont were sending me pictures of their heat pumps working when it was minus 20 out last week.”

The report estimates a switch to heat pumps would massively cut the greenhouse gas emissions put out by heating the typical home.

CREDIT: ENE EnergyVision report

The really big gains are in switching over bigger buildings. But similar technologies like electric heat pump hot water heaters and dehumidifying clothes driers can also get added reductions for the typical home. The report suggests expanding the state-level efficiency programs that already exist to encourage residential and commercial consumers to electrify their heating systems.

Electric Transportation. Using New England’s current fuel mix for electricity, the report estimates electric vehicles can reduce carbon emission from transportation by 60 percent, while cutting operating costs by 64 percent.

CREDIT: ENE EnergyVision report

Howland said the technology for both the cars themselves and the infrastructure is ready, it just needs to be deployed at a mass scale. Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles shot up 84 percent from 2012 to 2013, and within the last few months both the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt cut their prices to $28,800 and $34,995, respectively. (Purchasers of both are eligible for $7,500 tax credit.)

The plug-in hybrids are especially significant, because they avoid the range concerns that still hover overly purely electric cars. But for the average commuter, driving 10 to 20 miles a day, hybrids effectively function as electric cars emissions-wise.

The ENE report recommends policies and building codes to encourage charging infrastructure in homes and office building parking spaces. Electric cars and hybrids can also be used as on-site power storage for the buildings they’re plugged into: power is drawn out of their batteries to smooth out spikes in electricity demand, then they’re recharged when demand is low and the building is getting more electricity than it needs. The report also calls for greater electrification of buses, light rail, commuter rail and high-speed rail.

Modernize the grid. Under current regulations and market structures, utilities make their money by delivering power and by building the infrastructure by which it’s delivered. “There’s a very high rate of returns for transmission lines,” Howland explained, so of course utilities want to focus on that. But according to the ENE report, what’s needed is modern smart grid technology that turns each residential or commercial building into its own “micro utility.”

That means things like smart meters, smart thermostats, smart appliances, and modern electrical systems within homes and buildings that all communicate with each other and the owner. That makes for better demand management on site, less need for demand management from the utility, and more efficient use of power overall. Power storage can also help — such as the aforementioned use of electric vehicles as temporary batteries — as well as distributed generation like solar for more electricity produced on site.

But that means the regulatory and market structures surrounding utility companies needs to change, so they no longer see less power usage by their customer as a threat to their bottom line. “We just have to make the areas where [utilities] can be the most profitable the areas that are the best aligned with the public interest,” Howland said. A good template might be the recent proposal by Massachusetts to push smart grid technology throughout the state.

More energy efficiency. By cutting the amount of power homes and businesses actually need to function, the six New England states have already avoided spending $416 million on new transmission infrastructure. To build on that success, the ENE report recommends expanding Zero Net Energy building programs — which dovetail with making residential and commercial customers into their own “micro utilities” — as well as efficiency and weatherization incentives for existing homes. It also suggests a standardized Building Energy Labeling system, so any upgraded building can easily advertise the improvements, and gain more value when resold.

For new buildings, there’s the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). The 2009 and 2012 versions both cut energy use 15 percent a piece from 1975 levels. All of the northeastern states have adopted either the 2009 or 2012 iteration, and presumably will keep advancing as new versions are released.

The report also singles out better zoning regulations to encourage shorter commutes, more walking and bicycle use, and more green spaces.

Keep pushing renewables. One big caveat in all this: depending on how bad the leakage is throughout the country’s infrastructure — and several studies suggest its substantial — natural gas may actually have no greenhouse advantage over coal at all. In which case, the big shift to electrification described above wouldn’t deliver the emissions cuts.

But that’s not the only reason for the shift. It would also set the stage for renewables. Solar and wind won’t do as much good if cars are still run and homes are still heated by a fossil fuel system that works parallel to the electrical grid. “We need to make sure we’re ready for those renewables,” Howland insisted. That will mean adding all sorts of new demands — vehicles, heating, etc — to the grid. Which in turn will require smart systems to better manage demand. “We can’t do electrification without doing grid modernization.”

To establish the renewables themselves, the ENE report argues for strengthening state policies that are already in place, like renewable energy standards (RES) and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
Currently, every northeastern state has an RES that calls for anything from 10 and 30 percent of the state’s power to be renewable at some point between 2015 and 2026 then plateaus. (Massachusetts’ RES calls for 25 percent by 2030 and just keeps on going up.) The ENE EnergyVision report argues those goals should be set even higher.

RGGI, meanwhile, is a cap-and-trade system established in 2009, and now encompasses nine northeastern states. But the unexpected natural gas boom actually drove the region’s emissions well below the cap, which drove the value of the carbon permits down to rock bottom. Low prices mean low trading, and low trading means little incentive for further emissions cuts. So the states RGGI states recently decided to drop the cap 45 percent starting this year.

That should encourage a fresh round of efforts in the market to reduce carbon emissions. But right now the cap only extends to 2020 and only covers the power sector. The ENE EnergyVision report argues for extending that cap and its downward slope past 2020, and expanding carbon controls to others sectors of the economy.

Between the electrification, grid modernization, and the renewables push, ENE thinks the northeast could cut its carbon emissions 75 percent by 2050. They could also conceivably serve as an example for the rest of the country. Texas, for example, is heavily reliant on automobile travel, has hot summers where the need for cooling is widespread, and boasts a massive potential for solar and wind energy. It also released more carbon dioxide in 2011 than all the states covered by the ENE report combined.

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

====

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.”

###

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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Ph: (202) 265-PEER (7337) • Fax: (202) 265-4192
All content © 2014 Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
2000 P Street NW, Suite 240 Washington, DC 20036

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.”

Think Progress, Jan. 13, 2014

By IgorVolsky

The Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has opened a federal investigation into whether New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) improperly used Hurricane Sandy relief funds to produce commercials starring himself and his family ahead of his re-election campaign. Auditors will examine how the Christie administration used $25 million set aside for “a marketing campaign to promote the Jersey Shore and encourage tourism,” focusing on the bidding process awarding a $4.7 million contract to a politically connected firm that cast Christie and his family in the Sandy ads, while “a comparable firm proposed billing the state $2.5 million for similar work” but did not include Christie in the commercials.

The ads produced by the company, MWW, attracted significant criticism. The New Jersey Star Ledger accused Christie of siphoning off “money that was intended for victims of Sandy to promote himself in a series of TV ads,” and described the move as “offensive” and a ” new low.” Watch the ad here.

Here are 6 things you need to know about the investigation:

1. Congress raised alarms about the ads in August. In August, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) alerted the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that the Christie administration may have “irresponsibly misappropriated funding allocated by Congress from the Sandy aid package” and used funds set aside for promoting the state “for political purposes.” “[T]he contract was awarded to a firm that is charging over $2 million more than the next lowest bidder to develop the marketing plan,” Pallone wrote, noting that “the winning bid proposed including Governor Chris Christie in the advertisements, while the lower cost proposal that was not selected did not.” “It is inappropriate for taxpayer-funded dollars that are critical to our state’s recovery from this natural disaster to fund commercials that could potentially benefit a political campaign.”

2. Conservatives questioned Christie’s starring role. In November, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Christie’s appearance in the television ads gave the recovery effort a “black eye.” “People running for office put their mug all over these ads while they were in the middle of a political campaign,” Paul said during a committee hearing. “In New Jersey, $25 million was spent on ads that included somebody running for political office. You think there might be a conflict of interest there? That’s a real problem and that’s why when people who are trying to do good and trying to use taxpayers’ money wisely, they’re offended to see our money spent on political ads. That’s just offensive.”

3. Chair of bidding committee has close ties to Christie. A six-member bid evaluation committee of Christie administration officials selected the higher price despite issuing a report that said Sigma’s proposal also “addressed the tasks and deliverables specified in the RFQ (request for quotation)… (and) could effectively meet the requirements of this RFQ.” Michele Brown, a close Christie aid, led the bid evaluation. “Brown is a former federal prosecutor in New Jersey but resigned that post in 2009 amid controversy over a loan of $46,000 from Christie,” Asbury Park Press reports.

4. The winning firm donated thousands to Republicans. The East Rutherford, New Jersey based MWW Firm has donated heavily to Democrats, but “MWW employees donated $1,000 to Christie’s 2009 Republican gubernatorial primary campaign and $1,500 to his 2010 inaugural committee.” The MWW Group PAC “spent $95,250 in the 2012 federal election cycle, with 73 percent of the money going to Democrats, though the largest single expenditure, $5,000, went to the National Republican Congressional Committee.” The losing ad firm, Sigma, did not make any political contributions.

5. The winning firm originally sought more money. Contract documents reveal that “MWW’s team had sought $5.2 million in labor costs and markups, with company CEO Kempner requesting his own compensation to be set at $595 per hour. After negotiations with state officials, MWW reduced its price and removed Kempner from the compensation list.”

6. Christie says he selected firm for its “statewide connections.” The Christie administration insists that MWW was the best choice, claiming that it had “statewide connections that would allow it to mobilize quickly to perform the high-stakes work of boosting tourism in the first summer season since superstorm Sandy.” “The size and scope of the PR campaign that MWW undertook was far larger and more labor-intensive than any other bidder’s,” said Michael Drewniak, a Christie spokesperson.

UPDATE

Christie responds by attributing the ads to Obama: “The Stronger Than The Storm [ad] campaign was just one part of the first action plan approved by the Obama Administration and developed with the goal of effectively communicating that the Jersey Shore was open for business during the first summer after Sandy,” Christie spokesperson Colin Reed said in a statement. “We’re confident that any review will show that the ads were a key part in helping New Jersey get back on its feet after being struck by the worst storm in state history.” While the Obama administration approved a waiver to allow the state to spend $25 million on ads, it was not involved in the bidding process under federal review.

© 2005-2014 Center for American Progress Action Fund

Alternet, Feb. 1, 2014

by Alyssa Figueroa, AlterNet

Q&A: The director of NPA describes their long-term plan to create a new economy and reclaim our democracy.

What would it take to have an economy that really works for people, and not just corporations? For starters, it takes understanding how the conservative movement strategically built the economy we have, which serves the 1 percent.

That’s why the recent work of National People’s Action, a network of grassroots organizations founded in 1972, is so important. NPA’s network has about 100,000 members and hopes to grow as they prepare to build an economy that benefits all people, which is encapsulated in their ambitious and strategic Long-Term Agenda to the New Economy.

What has made the conservative movement successful and what should progressives be focused on achieving? I sat down with NPA’s executive director, George Goehl, to learn about the answers to those questions, NPA’s new agenda, and how we can organize to reclaim our democracy.

Alyssa Figueroa: National People’s Action released its "Long-Term Agenda to the New Economy," with pretty big goals, from demanding racial justice to requiring corporations to serve the public good. How possible do you think it is to achieve these goals?

George Goehl: I think they’re totally possible, but they are also long-term. When I took over the organization we were about dead, and so we spent five years rebuilding. But we felt like the next leap we needed to take in terms of strategy and vision needed to do an even better job of engaging our base in that conversation.

We got hundreds of our members to commit to spending a year really dissecting and learning from the corporate conservative agenda and how we ended up with this economy. And we always say, this isn’t a conspiracy theory — it’s a conspiracy. This was a plan they developed, and it worked. So let’s understand what happened to us, how they did it, and what we can learn from it.

And then we built out this vision, and it felt like so much of the work that organizers do and progressives do is built around what’s winnable — what can we win vs. what do people need. So as long as we’re only focused on what we can win, we’ll win that or less. Never has the head of a bank would say, after we demand that they put $50 million into neighborhoods, “Well, let’s put a hundred million.” We never got more than we demanded, so we needed to demand more. And we kind of needed a compass that pointed us towards what we’re trying to get, and then what are the steps to get there.

What really flipped a switch for the base was these guys weren’t just focused on aggregating profit, that they were trying to amass power. And even though all the banks don’t like each other or all the oil companies don’t like each other, they were in agreement that they, the corporations, needed to not just win the profit game but the power game. And I think that really helped people to think about that, and it helped me.

And so then we looked at, what would it look like for us to change the questions we ask before we get in campaigns, which would traditionally have been, would this fight improve people’s lives? or build the organization? or raise money to be order to sustain the organization? And then we thought about the other questions we need to ask, so one of them we really added in that process is, if we won on this fight, does it take power away from the opposition, which we would largely define as big corporations and would it shift power to people?

So to some extent, there’s these long-term goals around things like public control of the economy, corporations serving the public — that is where we want to end up. NPA has been around for 40 years, if they would have known that when they started and said, okay, we’re going to be around for 40 years, here’s what the first five years look like, here’s what the next 10 years will look like. What we know is this long-term agenda building process has had a transformative effect on people. People are contributing more time and money to the organization, and there’s an energy in NPA because of this agenda. So we are now trying to assemble a set of steps or moves over time that shift power to everyday people and therefore shift what is possible.

So we think all that’s doable.

AF: Do you feel like our political climate is right or you’re fighting against all odds?

GG: I think the political climate is simultaneously horrible and full of opportunity to create the change we need. National politics and our economics are pretty depressing. And yet, I don’t have any doubt that if you push this many people across racial, gender, generational lines down this hard for this long, there are going to be uprisings like Occupy or Wisconsin, they’re going to happen. But we’re thinking, how does that happen within a strategy so it’s not an episodic moment where they try to give us some relief so we shut up and go away, but creates a shift that results in more everyday people being in charge.

AF: The agenda states that structural reforms will lead to structural transformation. When it comes to change, do you believe making steps within the oppressive structures will ultimately change them?

GG: I think so, yeah. I’m not sure I would have said that three or four years ago or 10 years ago. But I would say a long-term structural reform strategy that included a focus on shifting worldview is a credible pathway toward transformative change in our political economy. But, it has to start with transformative long-term goals, or you’ll end up in the wrong place

As an example, if we secured legalization for [undocumented] 11 immigrants that led to a true path of citizenship, won some real money in politics reforms and made voting incredibly more accessible, we think that alone would change the playing field. That combined with real success around shaping the dominant worldview would be a big deal. From there we’d have to know what’s next—how we build on those codified shifts in power.

We actually had somebody go back and look at how corporations started on what we call structural reform pathways. One is deregulation. So we started to look at deregulation and how they started winning all these tiny little deregulation reforms that you wouldn’t even notice, but they were just chipping away at the public sector step by step. And at a certain point they just reached the tipping point. So not only were they creating more opportunity to profit, they actually had more control over the public sector and over government. You wouldn’t even have known it was happening, and I feel like what’s happened was a revolution. It just happened slowly. And they didn’t need to do any protests because they were in charge.

AF: What structural reforms will you be focusing on this year?

GG: We’re certainly focused on immigration reform. That goes without saying. We are looking at money and politics. We’re focused on corporations paying their fair share of taxes as a means of increasing public control over money. We’re asking how do we shift significant capital from what’s now in private control (through privatization and other means) back under public control? And then try to figure out how do those resources not just go to the old economy? We think one key component of the new economy is moving resources to both more local and community control and to public forms of control. This could include a broad set of ownership designs such as worker cooperative, locally accountable small businesses, and participatory budgeting models.

And then there’s a sustainability lens, so we have something in place now called community development block grants and HUD disperses this money to local governments and then here in San Francisco, there’s a debate around how that money’s going to get spent. It’s a good and important program. We’d like to see something more like new economy block grants that are basically dollars invested and focused on the transition economy — these grants would include a lens on community control, racial and gender justice, and sustainability.

A tiny structural reform we’d think would be important is currently in no states in the country now do corporations have to disclose how much they are paying to the state in taxes. So they come and get crazy subsidies and benefits and say, oh, we create jobs. We don’t even know how much they are paying in taxes now, but giving them additional subsidies. To address this, we’ve got bills we’re introducing in a set of states that would make them disclose how much they pay now. And obviously that’s not our ultimate goal: transparency. But we think that is the kind of strategy we’re trying to develop, building fights that help change what’s possible in the next fight.

AF: For getting money out of politics, what are NPA’s pathways to get there?

GG: First is building bottom-up campaigns in cities, counties and states where there’s analysis around the corporate sector, race and sustainability. And tax policies are very different in cities and states across the country.

So build campaigns that go on the offensive to make sure Verizon or Sears or Walmart or whoever it is paying their fair share in taxes. So there’d be mass political education to build a base that really understands the political dynamics, and can drive policy victories and help shift the narrative to truly name the ways that abusive corporations are at root of our current struggle, and that there are clear things we can do to fix this. You launch those campaigns, and at the local level people will be winning in some places, and playing defense in others, but we’ll all be in the struggle and aggregating those campaigns into a national story.

So the question we are asking is, how does work in Kansas and Ohio and Michigan and Rhode Island all add up in the story where everyday people around the country are not just wringing their hands or saying this economy’s a drag, but are actually going into the streets, going to the statehouse, doing direct action at offices of corporate tax dodgers and move solutions forward. And one of the tricks on anything with taxes is states pit each other against each other just like countries do, and so figure out how do we get enough activity going in enough states that it makes it a lot harder for corporations to do that.

In addition to the NPA part of this, we’re trying to figure out how do we get a broad enough set of allies doing this so basically there’s nowhere for corporations to go hide. We need every state to have an expectation that corporations are going to pay their fair share of taxes. And then meanwhile, that is connected to a civic engagement strategy to move these issues into the 2014 and 2016 elections because if we don’t, it’s going to be tough terrain.

But then there’s a challenge that a lot of people don’t feel good about the role of government. So there’s an opportunity to exploit and then a challenge to address. And the questions on the role of government come down to racism. Instead of running from tough conversations around race, let’s move into them. So that’s the kind of complexity we’re trying to add to our thinking — is like what does this fight allow us to do? Does it move us into the narrative that maybe we’ve shied away from historically but we need to go toward?

One of the things we’re doing to make sure we’re looking ahead is more scenario planning around the next bubble or financial crash because our history is really around banks and the financial sector. When the financial crash hit, progressives were not prepared. There was no infrastructure, hardly any organizing infrastructure. NPA and ACORN were the only groups with any real history on the issues. So, we were not collectively prepared to turn a terrible moment into the levels of structural change that we need.

We don’t have any doubt there’s going to be another bubble or crash. So there’s a set of people that are doing scenario planning around how to be prepared. We think you have to bust up the big banks. We think you have to build state banks and we think now they have to be controlled by the people.

AF: How viable do you feel the stock transaction tax or Wall Street tax is?

GG: We probably need to win some money in politics reforms first. I mean that’s what’s interesting about a long-term agenda. It’s quite possible you win the Wall Street tax by working on 10 things that have nothing to do with the Wall Street tax.

Perhaps the way to win the Wall Street tax is pass citizenship for undocumented immigrants, you get money out of politics, you win these voter reforms, and you build incredible electoral capacity. You can argue that is a strategy, and then maybe you don’t even have to talk about the Wall Street tax the whole damn time.

AF: As a national movement that pushes for community organizing, what is the key to balancing the local vs. national organizing?

GG: If we’ve done anything right, it’s actually hiring people on our national staff who come out of local organizing first. So there’s a deep respect for the kind of work and craft and the care that has to happen. Because the further national you get, the more removed you are from people’s everyday lives. So I think you have to have a staff that understands people. I think you’ve got to know that the local should drive.

So I think it’s just being really thoughtful about the balance. We’ve had moments where I think we were like leaning a little too hard toward the national first, and then we course corrected. Then there are times where we’re just being a little too patient for the local. For us, that also means we have an ongoing process between the national leadership and the local leadership. It’s a constant conversation.

The fun thing about being in NPA right now is there’s an insatiable appetite to figure out how do we do this in a way to create transformative change. Everybody’s basically waking up just deeply dissatisfied. And they should be. The politics and economics of now should make you deeply dissatisfied.

So you just have a group of people asking hard questions. It’s intoxicating to be around, and I think it’s actually one of the reasons why we’re growing. Hopefully, we’re doing it well, but I think it’s actually the nature of the moment. You simultaneously see crazy oppression and also crazy opportunity. And so we should all be thinking bigger and differently about what’s possible.

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