Oz Mudflats

The New Jersey Governor was full of appreciation and gratitude when he thanked President Obama for his administration’s quick response to much-needed relief and support in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

But evidently, once the crisis had been diffused, the media had gone home and the funds became available, Chris Christie saw an opportunity to merge his upcoming re-election with a tourism campaign – allegedly letting the relief money collected from taxpayers across the country – to foot the bill.

Here’s the commercial:

The original allegation was published on 06 Aug 013 in a Star-Ledger Editorial at NJ.com.

Think Progess has the full story here. In essence, Gov. Christie had the tourism ads intended to help rebuild his state’s economy after the hurricane filmed in such a way as to promote himself for re-election. If proven, this is apparently considered a gross misuse of taxpayer funds. Interesting.

Think Progress lists the six most important elements of the allegations in some detail – I want only to emphasize the first:

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.”

USA Today has a coherent timeline of how the scandal itself unfolds, and it’s worth bookmarking to have a chronology of events beginning on the first day of lane closure, but I want to focus on the events leading up to the lane closure (09 Sept 013) instead because I believe the events in August are all parts of the same smoking gun:

1.Allegations of Gov. Christie’s possible misappropriation of funds were made public by a local news source on 06 Aug 013 and shortly after, brought to the attention of HUD Inspector General by NJ Democratic congressman Frank Pallone.

2. On 12 Aug 013 a feud between Democratic and Republican Senators in NJ [click here for details] reaches a heated stand-off with Gov. Christie publicly pitching a fit. Coincidentally, the very next morning Christie’s Deputy Chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly sends the now infamous Time for Traffic Problems in Ft Lee email off to David Wildstein, Gov. Christie’s Port Authority appointee.

3. Earlier in the year, NJ Democratic Ft. Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich refuses to endorse Christie’s bid for re-election and while this was originally thought to be the motivation for garnering political retribution by clogging the GWB with a 4-day traffic jam, Mayor Sokolich’s refusal to endorse happened in the spring – along with many other Democratic mayors in NJ. It is more likely that spite was aimed at the Ft. Lee area because it is home to the Democratic Supreme Court nominee whom Christie – in an unprecedented and offensive move – refused to confirm for tenure, a move which begat the NJ Senate feud to begin with.

The fact that the Democratic mayor would also be inconvenienced was probably just gravy for the governor.

But the governor hadn’t a clue anything was amiss in his office.
*cough*

====== UPDATE ======

The Hill has an interesting story this morning… a second NJ Mayor has been named as a recipient of Christie punishment after the Wall Street Journal discovered a string of emails that were sent from June 013 through Aug 013 between Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and Gov. Christie’s staff (specifically Kelly and Baroni) regarding the scheduling and subsequent cancellation of meetings meant to introduce the newly-elected mayor to department heads such as Community Affairs, Recovery & Rebuilding, Transportation, etc. – meetings critical to keeping Jersey City on track with recovery from hurricane Sandy.

But when the new mayor announced he would not be endorsing Christie for governor, the meetings were mysteriously cancelled.

Mayor Fulop sent emails to Christie Staffers in August requesting the meetings be rescheduled but to no avail.His inquiries were not acknowledged.

August. Uh-huh.

That’s the fourth smoking gun part to be found in a week’s time.

====== UPDATE 2 ======

And the hits just keep rolling in…
According to MSNBC Ft Lee has a Billion-Dollar redevelopment project under construction directly beneath the access lanes feeding onto the George Washington Bridge – and Gov. Christie is not amused:

This past week it was learned that David Samson, a former New Jersey attorney general who was appointed by Christie to serve as chairman of the Port Authority, apparently met with Christie in early August – information that came to light in the email and text records of David Wildstein, another Christie Port Authority appointee, which were subpoenaed and released to the public. That apparent Christie-Samson meeting would have come before Christie’s now former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, wrote an August 13 email to Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic in Fort Lee.”

Baroni, in an appearance before the state Assembly committee investigating the matter in late November, also argued that Fort Lee was getting special treatment with the access lanes.  Taken together, his comment and Christie’s suggest the administration may have been looking at permanently closing or reducing the access lanes back in September.

And that September closure, we can now say, didn’t simply complicate the everyday lives of Fort Lee residents. It potentially jeopardized the value and the future of a $1 billion redevelopment plan that has been the centerpiece of Sokolich’s mayoral agenda for years.

Early August. That’s five.