NJ ethics attorney ‘frozen out’ after warning Murphy administration about improper hirings at NJ schools authority?

By Dustin Racioppi, Trenton Bureau, NorthJersey.com

Lawmakers “will be looking into” Gov. Phil Murphy’s hiring practices more thoroughly after NorthJersey.com and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey published an “extremely troubling” account of an ethics official trying to alert the governor’s office to improper hiring at the Schools Development Authority, Senate President Stephen Sweeney said Friday. 

Exactly how the Legislature will investigate is unclear. After the Network on Friday published a detailed account from Jane F. Kelly, a vice president in charge of ethics at the authority, Republican senators who served on the Select Oversight Committee called for a “renewed special legislative investigation” into the administration’s hiring practices. 

“I agree with the two senators that we’re going to have to look into this,” Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said in an interview. “We will be looking into this.” 

The decision comes less than two weeks after the oversight committee created last year to investigate hiring in the Murphy administration issued a report of its findings. But the committee focused almost exclusively on the hiring of one individual — Al Alvarez — and how he was hired as chief of staff at the schools authority. 

Alvarez had been accused of sexually assaulting Katie Brennan, a former Murphy campaign volunteer who now works in the administration, during the 2017 campaign. He was not charged and denies the allegation. 

Sweeney said there were similarities between Brennan’s case and Kelly’s. For months over 2017 and 2018, Brennan spoke with multiple Murphy aides about the alleged assault seeking action, but Alvarez was still given a top position in the administration. 

As the oversight committee prepared to begin its hearings last November, Kelly called the governor’s office to warn of improper and potentially illegal hiring at the schools authority. The former chief executive officer of the authority, Lizette Delgado-Polanco, had hired about three dozen people, many of them connected to her and unqualified for their jobs, after laying off about two dozen longtime employees. 

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney listens as Gov. Phil Murphy delivers a speech on the state budget on Tuesday, March 5, 2019, in Trenton.

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney listens as Gov. Phil Murphy delivers a speech on the state budget on Tuesday, March 5, 2019, in Trenton. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com)

Kelly said she was trying to alert Murphy’s office so it could take action. She was told to file a complaint, which led to the administration hiring an outside law firm to investigate. That advice was given to Kelly in consultation with the Attorney General’s office, and the investigation is ongoing. 

“I was clear to them: I’m trying to help you,” Kelly said. “The governor’s got a locomotive coming at him.”

That locomotive remained on the narrow track of Alvarez, though, while at least two other questionable hires gained little attention from the committee. Now that Kelly has come forward, Republican Sens. Kristin Corrado and Steven Oroho said in a letter that it’s time for a thorough review of hiring practices.

In the letter to Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, they said the committee should investigate the hiring processes and general operations at the authority and any other state agency, department or political subdivision. 

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The Energy 202: Democrats’ internal climate debate is not going away

By Dino Grandoni, The Lightbulb (Washington Post)

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) speaks during an event at the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant in Washington. (Susan Walsh/AP)

The debate among Democrats about holding a climate change debate is not going away. 

The back-and-forth between Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and advocates for a climate-themed debate has at times turned acrimonious. The uproar underscores the degree to which ensuring the United States is addressing the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere — and preparing to deal with their effects — has become a priority among Democratic voters.

The DNC came down with its decision last week, writing in a letter to Democratic candidates that “the DNC will not be holding entire debates on a single issue area,” DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said. Democratic candidate and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has tried for years to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions in his own state, had formally asked the DNC for a climate debate in a letter.

Inslee, who has centered his campaign around climate change, fired back at the committee for “silencing the voices of Democratic activists.”

Perez followed up by penning a longer explanation on Medium explaining that the party has received more than 50 requests for issue-specific debates. “And we knew it would be unfair and unrealistic to ask the candidates to participate in so many,” he wrote. 

But activists are not taking no for an answer. In Washington on Wednesday, a coalition of groups delivered a petition with more than 200,000 signatures to DNC headquarters calling for a climate change debate. And that same day in Kansas City, activists with the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group, confronted Perez, accusing the chairman of using the party rules as “a very thin defense.”

Perez promised that portions of the scheduled debates will be on climate change. “You carve out a section of the debate, and it’s on issue A or issue B,” Perez responded. “We will be doing that throughout the course of the debate season.”

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Report: ‘Most dangerous’ hackers are targeting U.S. utilities

Blake Sobczak, E&E News reporter Friday, June 14, 2019

electric grid substation. Photo credit: DOE/Flickr
A North American Electric Reliability Corp. report finds that a notorious hacking group has engaged in “reconnaissance” activities directed at U.S. electric utilities since late last year.
An electrical substation is pictured. DOE/Flickr

Some of the world’s most dangerous hackers have zeroed in on the U.S. power sector in recent months, according to a nonpublic alert issued by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. this spring and new research.

The grid regulator sounded the alarm on March 1 with the industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos Inc. over a notorious hacking group known as “Xenotime” in the report. Xenotime has been spotted hitting U.S. electric utilities with “reconnaissance and potential initial access operations” since late last year, the alert said.

The hacking group, infamous for infecting the safety systems of a Saudi petrochemical plant with highly specialized, life-threatening malware two years ago, isn’t known to have broken through to the sensitive controls of U.S. power plants or substations.

The fact that the attackers behind the “Triton” malware can switch gears from hacking oil companies to electric utilities is significant, experts say, given the group’s sophistication and its suspected ties to Russian intelligence agencies (Energywire, March 7).

“Xenotime remains the most dangerous cyberthreat in the world, with the capability and intent to kill people,” said Sergio Caltagirone, vice president of threat intelligence at Dragos. “We’ve been very proactive at working with hundreds of electric utilities, preparing them with intelligence and defensive recommendations to best defend the U.S. electric grid against an attack from an adversary of this caliber.”

Dragos reported last year that Xenotime had expanded the scope of its malicious operations to include U.S. targets, although the firm did not specify which sectors came into the hackers’ crosshairs.

Today, the company issued a blog post detailing Xenotime’s activity dating back to 2017. After hackers “successfully compromised several oil and gas environments,” Xenotime has demonstrated “consistent, direct interest in electric utility operations” spanning North America to the Asia-Pacific region, Dragos said, citing work with unidentified clients. Dragos added that Xenotime remains interested in oil and gas targets, calling the group’s foray into a new industry “emblematic of an increasingly hostile industrial threat landscape.”

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Six Flags in NJ is now one of the world’s only solar-powered theme parks.

Roughly 12.5 megawatts of grounded solar panels now sit on 40 acres of land near Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township,Ocean County, New Jersey.

By Michael Sol Warren | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

After years spent touting its latest roller coasters and safari revamps, Six Flags Great Adventure has a new claim to fame: one of the world’s first solar-powered amusement parks.

The Jackson tourist destination is now almost entirely powered by a massive new collection of nearly 60,000 solar panels spans parking lots and 40 acres of previously unused land.

The panels, which cost more than $70 million to construct and were publicly unveiled Wednesday, soak up sunlight, convert it to 23.5 megawatts of electricity and provide 98% of the power needed to keep the sprawling theme park running. Whatever is not used is sent back to the grid.

The solar farm, built by KDC Solar, is now the largest net-metered solar array in the state (net-metered means the solar arrays send extra electricity back into the larger power grid).

“This project represents a giant step toward becoming a net-zero carbon facility,” said Six Flags Great Adventure Park President John Winkler.

State Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), the head of the state Senate’s environment committee, praised the park’s switch to solar as a model that should be replicated statewide.

“We should be doing one of these every week in New Jersey,” Smith said.

Construction on the solar array began in early 2018, after a long legal battle over the clear-cutting of forests required for the project.

The project originally called for 100 acres of forests to be removed to make room for a solar farm near the park’s safari attraction. Environmental groups challenge that plan, arguing that it altered too much of the natural landscape. Forty acres of trees were ultimately cut to accommodate about half the panels used for the entire project.

“Six flags will get a solar farm while we get to preserve forested lands, everyone wins today,” said Jeff Tittel, New Jersey Sierra Club Director. “New Jersey could have the first amusement park in the country powered by solar power.”

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Related news stories:
More on Great Adventure solar success story from a grateful Jackson Township resident
Six Flags Great Adventure announces park now ‘almost fully’ solar-powered (Philly Voice)
Six Flags Great Adventure unveils massive Jackson solar farm (Asbury Park Press)



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