HOBOKEN – Miscalculated scoring rubrics that determined which New Jersey municipalities would receive state aid in the wake of Hurricane Sandy could be behind the significant shortchanging of aid to Hoboken that Mayor Dawn Zimmer said in January was a case of political retaliation by Gov. Christopher Christie, according to a report on WNYC.
According to the report, the criteria, which awarded Hoboken enough funding for one of the 12 emergency generators the city plans to install in important buildings around town, should have granted the city an additional $697,600 more than it received, around $148,000.
The money would have come from the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program’s Energy Allocation Initiative, one of the few aid programs completely under the governor’s purview.
The scoring inaccuracies, WNYC said, occurred because the state grouped together Hoboken’s requests in a manner different from requests filed by other municipalities. Hoboken submitted its requests in relatively the same manner as other municipalities, listing each generator’s potential function and purpose. But the state ignored certain other factors included on the rubric, such as the city’s recent energy audits and its history of flooding, WNYC said.
The WNYC report is the latest development in a showdown between the state and Zimmer, who in January publicly accused high-ranking Christie officials of telling her that Sandy aid was being withheld because she wasn’t fast-tracking a development project on the north end of town. Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who Zimmer named on national television as the official who allegedly relayed the message to Zimmer, has denied the allegations.
For the entire WNYC report, which was written in conjunction with NJ Spotlight, visit http://www.wnyc.org/story/christie-owes-hoboken-after-sandy/ – Dean DeChiaro
Fuzzy math? Christie could owe Hoboken $700K in Sandy funding due to faulty calculations, report says
