18 Jan 2014 1:43 pm
Mayor of Hoboken, N.J.: Christie aides tied Sandy fund requests to support for project.
The mayor has produced her journal that shows that she made entries about both of these instances at the time they occured in May, 2013.
Hoboken was badly damaged by Sandy and the mayor requested $127 million in aid.
To date the city has only received a tiny fraction, $142,000 — less than the cost of one new generator.
The city also received $200,000 from a separate pot of $1.8 billion to rebuild in the wake of Sandy, again a small fraction of its request.
The mayor is being pressured to approve a proposal from the New York-based Rockefeller Group to develop a stretch of the city.
The Rockefeller Group is represented by a law firm called Wolff and Samson.
That's Port Authority Chairman David Samson, a Christie ally whose name appeared in the e-mails pertaining to the lane closures in Fort Lee.
I saw that interview this morning.The mayor of Hoboken on Saturday accused two top officials in the administration of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) of threatening to withhold Hurricane Sandy aid from the hard-hit city unless she supported a development project backed by the governor.
The accusation came in an interview on the MSNBC program “Up With Steve Kornacki” and was immediately denied by a Christie spokesman.
But it is likely to generate new and potentially damaging questions for the probable 2016 presidential contender, in the wake of allegations that other Christie aides engineered a traffic jam in Fort Lee, N.J., possibly as retaliation for the Democratic mayor’s refusal to endorse the governor’s reelection campaign last year.
An allegation that Christie aides held desperately needed money hostage to other political concerns could also serve to undermine Christie’s widely praised handling of the devastating storm.
Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said on MSNBC that she was twice told in person that her city needed to approve the development project in order to receive funding it had requested for post-storm rebuilding projects.
She said the message was first conveyed by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno on May 13, five days after Hoboken’s planning board had rejected the development proposal.
She said Guadagno pulled her aside after touring a ShopRite that had been rebuilt after the storm and told her the two issues were linked.
Zimmer provided MSNBC with an entry from her personal diary in which she recounted the incident, which she said she wrote later that day.
“It is very important to the governor,” the diary describes Guadagno as saying of the development project. “The word is that you are against it, and you need to move forward or we are not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right — these things should not be connected — but they are, she says, and if you tell anyone, I will deny it.”
Zimmer said she was given the same message four days later by Richard Constable, Christie’s community affairs commissioner. As the two prepared to appear on a television program about Sandy recovery, she said Constable told her she needed to support the project for her city to receive aid.
Read More At Link In Title
The mayor has produced her journal that shows that she made entries about both of these instances at the time they occured in May, 2013.
Hoboken was badly damaged by Sandy and the mayor requested $127 million in aid.
To date the city has only received a tiny fraction, $142,000 — less than the cost of one new generator.
The city also received $200,000 from a separate pot of $1.8 billion to rebuild in the wake of Sandy, again a small fraction of its request.
The mayor is being pressured to approve a proposal from the New York-based Rockefeller Group to develop a stretch of the city.
The Rockefeller Group is represented by a law firm called Wolff and Samson.
That's Port Authority Chairman David Samson, a Christie ally whose name appeared in the e-mails pertaining to the lane closures in Fort Lee.