To the Editor:
Thanks to Al Sullivan for his excellent stories on the ongoing privatization threat to Liberty State Park from wrong-headed legislation.
Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto should be ashamed of himself for breaking his Liberty State Park promise in his February 5 press release at the time of the governor signing a bill, with last-minute Liberty State Park language, which obscenely gave the new Meadowlands Regional Commission (MRC) the power to approve and implement any plan for Liberty State Park.
Assembly Speaker Prieto’s and co-sponsor Senator Sarlo’s press release stated that a new bill will clarify that MRC may only review plans for Liberty State Park, but unconscionably his new bill, A4196, still gives MRC power to “approve and implement” Liberty State Park plans! In abandoning his press release promise, he cast aside weeks of strong public opposition to the bill’s Liberty State Park language and decades of the broad public consensus for an open space, non-privatized park behind Lady Liberty.
The speaker stated he is still including the commission’s approve-and-implement language because the DEP requested it. He should just say no to the DEP, as he must know that the governor wants to use the commission to ramrod large-scale Liberty State Park privatization plans, and that the DEP already has development plans, after paying NJ Future $120,000 to hire a New York City company to seek proposals and look at every inch of the park, according to a DEP spokesman.
The wolves are gathering at Liberty State Park’s door with A4196 facilitating the MRC’s ramrodding of Liberty State Park plans. If Assembly Speaker Prieto truly cares about protecting Liberty State Park from ill-conceived and unpopular plans, he will live up to his MRC review-only promise and change the bill’s language, and Senator Sarlo will introduce a Senate version that honors their February 5 pledge to lessen the threat to Liberty State Park’s future.
SAM PESIN
President
Friends of Liberty State Park