EnviroPolitics Blog

Did illegal lobbying influence billions in N.J. tax incentives?

Updated Apr 12, 2019; Posted Apr 12, 2019

Ronald Chen, chairman of the governor’s task force examining the state Economic Development Authority. (Tony Kurdzuk | Star-Ledger file photo)

A special task force investigating New Jersey’s troubled Economic Development Authority says it uncovered evidence of “unregistered lobbying” in connection with the state’s tax incentive program and has referred the matter to law enforcement.

A spokesman for the task force would not provide any details on the nature of the alleged offense, who was being investigated, or where the matter had been referred to for criminal investigation. The task force’s special counsel said only that unregistered lobbying had “materially affected the legislation and regulations governing New Jersey’s tax incentives granted to businesses.”

Attorney Jim Walden, who serves as special counsel to the task force, outlined the evidence of those potential criminal violations in a referral letter which was sent on Thursday.

How those state EDA grants are awarded, and the regulations governing eligibility, can mean significant financial benefits to companies that qualify for those tax credits. The EDA program has given out tax credit incentives worth $11 billion since its inception.

Meanwhile, one unnamed company that was the beneficiary of an EDA incentive grant has voluntarily come forward to admit it was not in compliance with program requirements, and agreed to repay the payments it has received, saving taxpayers $1.5 million, officials disclosed.

The task force was formed by Gov. Phil Murphy in the wake of an audit by the state comptroller in January, which sharply criticized the EDA’s oversight of the state’s economic incentive program that hat offers lucrative tax credits to lure businesses to New Jersey, encourage them to stay or expand their operations.

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Bill Baroni begins serving his Bridgegate prison sentence

Former Port Authority official Bill Baroni

Associated Press

TRENTON — An appointee of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has reported to prison for his role in the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal.

Bill Baroni started serving his 18-month sentence Tuesday in the Loretto Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania.

Baroni was an executive of the authority that operates the bridge. He was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 24 months in what prosecutors said was a plot to create traffic jams to retaliate against a mayor who wouldn’t endorse Christie.

Mike Kelly: Abandoning his appeals, Bill Baroni will go to prison for his role in Bridgegate plot

Bridgegate: Resentencing set for Bridget Anne Kelly in GWB lane-closure plot

Mike Kelly: Lingering mystery over the Bridgegate traffic scandal: Why didn’t feds charge more people?

In November, a federal appeals court threw out civil rights counts against Baroni and co-defendant Bridget Kelly and ordered they be resentenced.

Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, is scheduled to be resentenced April 24.

The former Republican governor wasn’t charged, but the scandal derailed his presidential ambitions.

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Oh, poo: Human waste may close this Shark River beach in Belmar

Michael Sol Warren reports for NJ.com

An ongoing leak of human waste may force a Jersey Shore town to shut down one of its beaches until the problem is solved.

According to a report by the Asbury Park Press, leaky sewers in Belmar have been sending untreated waste into the Shark River. The leak has stirred public health concerns, and the town is considering closing the L Street beach indefinitely.

During storms, wastewater in Belmar’s sewer system mixes with the stormwater and overflows, sending sewage into the nearby Shark River.

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The source of the leak is sewers in the area of Route 35 and K Street, according to a violation issued by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to Belmar.

The L Street beach is a small strip of bayshore sand east of MacLearie Park. It stretches a single block between L Street and K Street.

The NJDEP violation was issued after a December inspection found that Belmar failed to to address sewer overflows into the Shark River, pump stations not built to standards or with the proper approvals and no scheduled routine maintenance of the sewer system among other infractions.

“Belmar is cooperating with the department,” NJDEP Spokeswoman Caryn Shinske told the Asbury Park Press. “The DEP met with Belmar last week and Belmar has proposed closing the L Street Shark River beach to bathers until repairs to the system can be identified and corrected to prevent future discharges.”

Shinske told NJ Advance Media that the NJDEP supposrts and recommends the closure of the L Street beach.

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Thomas Gagliano, former NJ Senate minority leader, dies at 87

Republican S. Thomas Gagliano represented Monmouth County in the New Jersey State Senate from 1978 to 1989. He later spent two years as the executive director of New Jersey Transit. Thomas Gagliano, former Senate minority leader, dies at 87

David Wildstein reports for New Jersey Globe
April 14, 2019 12:09 pm

Former New Jersey Senate Minority Leader S. Thomas Gagliano, a popular and respected legislator who served as executive director of New Jersey Transit, died on Saturday night. He was 87.

A wake will be held on Tuesday from 4:00-8:00 PM at the Woolley-Boglioi Funeral Home, 10 Morrell Street in Long Branch. A funeral mass will be offered on Wednesday at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Long Branch, followed by interment at the Glenwood Cemetery in West Long Branch,

A fixture in Monmouth County politics for seven decades, Gagliano began his long career in New Jersey politics in the 1950s as an aide to Rep. James Auchincloss (R-Rumson) while attending law school at Georgetown University.

Within months of his graduation from law school, he has become the attorney for the new Shore Regional school to help get site approval of a controversial new high school in West Long Branch. He later represented a group of taxpayers opposing a sewer rate hike in Long Branch and secured a planning board seat in his hometown of Oceanport.

In 1961, at age 29, Gagliano became a candidate for State Assembly. Monmouth had picked up a third Assembly seat after the 1960 census and Gagliano wanted to run with incumbents Alfred Beadleston (R-Rumson) and Clifton Barkalow (R-Freehold). He withdrew when the county GOP decided to go with attorney Irving Keith (R-Bradley Beach) as their candidate.

He continued to become a powerhouse in Oceanport, winning the Republican Club presidency and trading his planning board seat for the planning board attorney slot.

Gagliano mounted his second campaign for assemblyman in 1964, following the resignation of Assemblyman Clarkson Fisher (R-Sea Bright). Fisher, who had won Barkalow’s open seat the previous year, resigned to become a Monmouth County judge.

The race for Clarkson’s seat drew a strong field of candidates, including Middletown Republican municipal chairman Joseph Azzolina, Red Bank GOP chairman John Arnone, Long Branch city attorney Louis Aikens, and Asbury Park councilman James Coleman. Monmouth County Republican chairman J. Russell Wooley went with Aikens and the rest of the candidates dropped out.

In 1967, he was elected to the Oceanport Borough Council. He defeated Democrat Siguard Andreson by about 170 votes.

Gagliano’s law practice continued to grow and he became the counsel to the Monmouth County Welfare Board and the Holmdel township attorney. He later added the Shrewsbury Zoning Board to his client list.

Bid for Monmouth County Surrogate

Aikens gave up his Assembly seat in 1969 to run for Monmouth County Surrogate but resigned after thirteen months in office. President Nixon had nominated Fisher to serve as a federal judge and Gov. William Cahill picked Aikens to take the vacant county court judgeship.

Cahill nominated Gagliano, now 39, to be the new surrogate, a part-time, $18,000-a-year post in those days.

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Norway refuses to drill for billions of barrels of oil in Arctic

The Northern Lights over Hamnoya, a fishing village in Norway’s Lofoten Islands

Harry Cockburn reports for the Independent

‘What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth,’ the famed naturalist saysThe largest party in Norway’s parliament has delivered a significant blow to the country’s huge oil industry after withdrawing support for explorative drilling off the Lofoten islands in the Arctic, which are considered a natural wonder.

The move, by the opposition Labour party, creates a large parliamentary majority against oil exploration in the sensitive offshore area, illustrating growing opposition to the polluting fossil fuel, which has made the country one of the world’s most affluent.

The country currently pumps out over 1.6 million barrels of oil a day from its offshore operations.

Norway’s largest oil producer, the state-controlled company Equinor ASA, has said gaining access to oil supplies in Lofoten is essential for the country to maintain production levels.

It is thought there are between 1 billion to 3 billion barrels of oil beneath the seabed off the Lofoten archipelago. The area had already been kept off limits for years by Norway’s coalition government through various political deals.

“The whole industry is surprised and disappointed,” Karl Eirik Schjott-Pedersen, head of the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association told Bloomberg. “It does not provide the predictability we depend on.”

Labour’s opposition, announced by its leader, Jonas Gahr Store, exposes a rift in the party as the leadership tries to reflect the population’s rising environmental concerns, while also aiming to support workers’ unions in the oil industry, which have been major backers of the party.

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Mr Store said his party would continue to support the oil industry, but has also said he wants oil firms in the country to commit to a deadline for making all operations emissions free.

Norway’s biggest oil union, Industry Energy, which has been a long-time ally of Labour, has attacked the party’s new stance on drilling in Lofoten, which comes less than two years after an internal party compromise on the issue.

“It creates imbalances in the policy discussions for an industry that’s dependent on a long-term perspective and we can’t accept that,” Frode Alfheim, the union’s leader, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“There’s probably a lot of people in the industry who are wondering what Labour actually stands for.”

The move comes days after Norway’s government gave the go-ahead on Friday for its $1trillion (£760bn) oil fund – the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund – to invest in renewable energy projects not listed on stock markets.

Billions are expected to be spent on wind and solar power projects.

It is the latest indication that wealth accumulated through fossil fuels is being redirected towards future profits in renewable energy. Greater numbers of industries and countries have begun fossil fuel divestment strategies, citing future risks to their business and economic models.

Last month Norway’s oil fund said it would no longer invest in 134 companies which explore for oil and gas, but would retain stakes in large oil firms including BP and Shell, which have renewable energy divisions.

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David Attenborough gave the natural world a voice. Now he’s talking about climate change like never before.

‘What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth,’ the famed naturalist says

David Attenborough, narrator of the Netflix series “Our Planet,” spoke about the impacts of climate change on the natural world. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)

Brady Dennis reports for the Washington Post April 11

Sir David Attenborough has been documenting nature for more than six decades. His various television series — such as “Life on Earth,” “The Living Planet” and “Planet Earth” — have taken viewers to every corner of the globe, capturing the beauty and complexity of the natural world.

At 92, the renowned British naturalist is hardly finished.

In recent years, Attenborough increasingly has used his spellbinding whisper of a voice not only to describe the courtship rituals of birds of paradise or the mass migration of millions of Christmas Island red crabs, but also to repeatedly sound the alarm about climate change.

Last fall at a global climate conference in Poland, he told world leaders that “if we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilization and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” Earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Attenborough again pushed for action, warning, “The Garden of Eden is no more.”

“The only conditions modern humans have ever known are changing and changing fast,” he said at the time, adding, “It is tempting and understandable to ignore the evidence and carry on as usual or to be filled with doom and gloom. … We need to move beyond guilt or blame and get on with the practical tasks at hand.”

Attenborough’s latest project, an eight-part Netflix series produced in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund, is full of sobering reminders about how climate change is threatening significant parts of the natural world, coupled with the hope that humans might find the collective willpower to avert the most catastrophic consequences.

“Our Planet” was filmed over four years and across every continent, taking viewers to the remote Arctic wilderness, the vast plains of Africa and the depths of the world’s oceans to explore how much of nature is changing — and, in many ways, vanishing — in the age of climate change. Its central message is one of urgency.

“What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth,” Attenborough intones in the first episode of “Our Planet.”

Before a screening this week at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Attenborough spoke with The Post about the project, his reasons for optimism and what keeps him motivated. What follows has been edited for length and clarity

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