Bridgegate: Out of public eye, a defense push for mistrial

Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni outside federal court on  Nov. 3, 2016 (Mitsu Yasukawa/ Record photo)


The jury in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure trial deliberated a fourth day without a verdict Thursday as defense lawyers privately sought to persuade the judge to declare a mistrial, deepening the mystery of one of the most high-profile criminal cases in recent memory.


Dustin Racioppi reports for The Record:


The reason for the mistrial request was unclear because the four-page letter sent to Judge Susan D. Wigenton was mostly blacked out. Hours after the request was filed, lawyers for a group of media outlets, including Gannett, which publishes The Record, asked Wigenton to release the letter as well as sealed documents in the case.
An in-depth look at the scandal over the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge and related aftershocks. Click here to launch.

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Wigenton did not respond to that motion for the full mistrial but did seal closed-door proceedings from Wednesday because their “disclosure may complicate the court’s efforts to ensure a fair trial,” she wrote.

Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni – two former associates of Governor Christie — are fighting charges they worked together to close access lanes to the bridge to punish Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, for not endorsing Christie for reelection in 2013. Baroni was the deputy executive director of the Port Authority and Kelly was a deputy chief of staff to Christie at the time. Another former Port Authority official, David Wildstein, has pleaded guilty.

Lawyers met several times in Wigenton’s courtroom Wednesday behind locked doors and declined to comment to reporters who were camped out in the hallway, attempting to get information on the trial’s developments. But Wigenton ordered transcripts of the discussions sealed.

Bruce Rosen, an attorney for the media outlets, asked the judge in a Thursday filing to either open the court or give specific reasons for sealing documents and locking the courtroom.

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“This is one of the highest-profile trials of public officials in state history and it continues to draw national attention. It is essential to public confidence in the integrity of the judicial system that the public be able to fully understand and discuss the issues at stake as to conduct of this trial,” wrote Rosen, of the Florham Park firm McCusker, Anselmi, Rosen & Carvelli. “This prosecution and the issues involving allegations of public corruption are at the very core of the First Amendment and the public is entitled to be fully informed.”



Bone of contention

The punishment of Sokolich was the backbone of the case against Kelly and Baroni but is now the bone of contention in the trial. Siding with the prosecution earlier in the week, Wigenton instructed the jury that Kelly and Baroni did not have to intentionally punish Sokolich to be found guilty of conspiracy. They are charged with seven counts each of conspiracy, wire fraud and civil rights violations.

Wigenton’s decision would “eviscerate” the defense’s case because “punishment is the key,” said Michael Critchley, the lead attorney for Kelly. Critchley and Baroni’s lead attorney, Michael Baldassare, filed a joint motion Wednesday asking Wigenton to reinstruct the jury and include language of retribution against Sokolich in the conspiracy charges. She denied the request Thursday.


Critchley and Baldassare then tried a new approach. They filed a joint request asking Wigenton to instruct the jury to disregard evidence related to Steven Fulop, the Democratic mayor of Jersey City who was allegedly punished in 2013 for not endorsing Christie.

“The Fulop evidence was admitted to support the now abandoned prosecution theory of punishment of Mayor Sokolich,” Baldassare wrote. “Because punishment is no longer an issue – according to the court and the prosecution – the jury should be instructed to disregard the Fulop evidence. It is no longer relevant or useful in any way and, in fact, can only serve to unfairly prejudice the defendants.”
Wigenton did not respond to that request Thursday.

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This farmer makes use of solar power, even in the dark

Rows of solar panels are spread over 25 acres of Nicholas Beatty’s
farm near Hartwell, England.  Credit: Andrew Testa for The New York Times

HARTWELL, ENGLAND —
A new cash crop has sprung up on Nicholas Beatty’s enchanting farm near here.
Rows of gray solar panels range over about 25 acres, turning sunlight into
electricity, as dog-size muntjac deer hop by.
The panels themselves, trouble-free money earners that feed into
the electric grid, are no longer unusual on farms in Britain or other
countries. What’s new in Mr. Beatty’s field is a hulking 40-foot-long shipping
container.
Stacked inside, in what look like drawers, are about 200
lithium-ion cells that make up a battery large enough to store a substantial
portion of the electricity the solar farm puts out.
The battery and its software give Mr. Beatty an advantage over
other solar panel farmers. Power prices in Britain and elsewhere rise and fall,
sometimes strikingly, during the day and over the year, depending on the supply
and demand. By storing power in the battery, Mr. Beatty can feed it into the
grid when prices are high. “The battery effectively takes power off the line
when there is too much and puts it on when there is too little,” he said.

The battery inside a storage container on Nicholas Beatty’s property can store a substantial portion of the electricity from his solar farm. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Mr. Beatty is one of many entrepreneurs and businesses trying to
play the fast-shifting electric power landscape. The global effort to
combat climate
change is forcing what had been an old-line business to evolve.
Polluting, coal-fired power stations are closing, while clean energy sources
like wind and solar are growing fast. 
Mr. Beatty said the battery, which which costs about 825,000 pounds, or $1 million, could increase revenue for his solar farm by as much as £200,000 a year. In addition to making more by timing his delivery to the grid, he said he planned to enter an auction to become a standby source of power to compensate for unexpected drops in the grid.
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Environment bills in NJ Senate committees – Nov 3

Here are the environment bills scheduled for votes tomorrow in the New Jersey Senate Environment and Energy Committee and the Senate Budget and Appropriate Committee.

SENATE ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
10 AM
Committee Room 10, 3rd Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ
*Revised 11/1/16 – A-1649 (1R) (Schaer/Spencer/Pintor Marin) – added for
consideration.
A-1649  Schaer, G.S. (D-36); Spencer, L.G. (D-29);
Pintor Marin, E. (D-29)
Requires local governments and authorities to obtain
financing cost estimate from NJ Environmental Infrastructure Trust for certain
projects.
      
S-853  Stack, B.P. (D-33)
Requires local governments and authorities to obtain
financing cost estimate required to be provided by NJ Environmental
Infrastructure Trust for certain projects.
      
S-1160  Holzapfel, J.W. (R-10)
Provides State income tax credit for removal of lawns
near Barnegat Bay.
Related Bill: A-1312
      
S-2731  Greenstein, L.R. (D-14); Bateman, C. (R-16)
Authorizes New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure
Trust to expend additional sums to make loans for environmental infrastructure
projects in FY 2017.
    
S-2732  Codey, R.J. (D-27); Gill, N.H. (D-34)
Amends list of environmental infrastructure projects
approved for long-term funding for FY 2017 to include new projects and revise
allowable loan amounts.
      
SCR-39  Smith, B. (D-17); Greenstein, L.R. (D-14)
Amends Constitution to dedicate all State moneys
received from settlements and awards in cases of environmental contamination
for certain environmental purposes.
Related Bill: ACR-127
  

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SENATE BUDGET AND APPROPRIATIONS
1 PM
Committee Room 4, 1st Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ
S-487  Oroho, S.V. (R-24); Sarlo, P.A. (D-36)
Excludes corrugated containers sold by the manufacturer
from definition of “litter-generating product”; exempts such sales
from user fee imposed under “Clean Communities Program Act.”
      
S-1602  Weinberg, L. (D-37); Cardinale, G. (R-39)
Modifies powers and allocation of Historic New Bridge
Landing Park Commission.
Related Bill: A-1406
      
S-2300  Stack, B.P. (D-33); Beck, J. (R-11)
Ensures fairness of project deadlines, enhances
transparency, and creates foreclosure protections for Superstorm Sandy victims.
Related Bill: A-333
     
S-2422  Madden, F.H. (D-4)
Requires recycling of scrap tires and licensing of
scrap tire haulers.
Related Bill: A-4093
     

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The face of politics in Pennsylvania: Terry Madonna

  • Matt Martell writes for The Daily Item:

    •  

They had seen him on television, heard his voice on the radio and read his words in the newspaper.
So when the guest speaker was introduced to dozens of bankers having lunch at a ballroom of the Wyndham Garden Hotel in York early in June, he really needed no introduction.
G. Terry Madonna is Pennsylvania’s premier political pundit, and in political circles,  he may be as famous as the politicians he talks and writes about.
Madonna is now in his fourth decade of living politics 24/7, and he shows no signs of slowing down, even after his 75th birthday

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A new front emerges in the battle against eminent domain

Marie Cusick photo for StateImpact
Eminent domain attorneys and their clients battling new pipelines in Pennsylvania courts feel they may have a new weapon in the fight against controversial projects like Sunoco’s Mariner East. The recent decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to toss out industry-friendly provisions of the state’s oil and gas law included eminent domain for gas storage.
Susan Phillips writes for State Impact:
All across the state, private landowners have fought eminent domain takings for pipelines, arguing that the lines do not serve the public good. But they haven’t had much luck in convincing county judges, who have in all but just a few cases, ruled against landowners.
In September, a majority of the Supreme Court ruled that using eminent domain for underground gas storage violated both the federal and state constitutions. The court wrote that the public was not the “primary and paramount” beneficiary, as the state had claimed.
“Instead, it advances the proposition that allowing such takings would somehow advance the development of infrastructure of the Commonwealth. Such a projected benefit is speculative, and, in any event, would be merely an incidental one and not the primary purpose for allowing these takings,” wrote Justice Debra McCloskey Todd for the majority.
The decision was cheered by lawyers like Alex Bomstein, an attorney for the Clean Air Council challenging eminent domain takings by Sunoco Logistics for the Mariner East 2 pipeline. Mariner East 2 will carry natural gas liquids from western Pennsylvania to Delaware County where it will be shipped to Scotland to make plastics.
“Mere economic benefit is not enough,” said Bomstein. “Right now in Pennsylvania nobody is starving from lack of ethane. Nobody is crying in the streets for more butane. There is no apparent public need for these things and that’s demonstrated by the fact that [the gas products] are being exported.”
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AECOM gets $41.5M for NYC wastewater resiliency

AECOM, an integrated global infrastructure firm, announced that it has been awarded a five-year term $41.5-million program and construction management contract as part of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s Wastewater Resiliency Program.

The program is built on the city’s Wastewater Resiliency Plan, which was released in October 2013 following Superstorm Sandy to prepare for the impacts of future storms. The plan provides a scientific analysis of severe weather events and identifies more than 500 construction projects to harden the city’s wastewater facilities.
As part of this program, AECOM will provide program and construction management for the design and construction of $200 million in resiliency upgrades for the city’s 14 wastewater treatment plants and more than 50 pumping stations located throughout its five boroughs.
“Remembering the damage that Superstorm Sandy inflicted on New York City, coupled with the predicted future increase of extreme weather and the well documented rising sea level, the need to make the city’s infrastructure more resilient is critically important,” said AECOM’s Paul Storella, vice president, NYC metro water business unit leader.

“We are honored to work with the DEP and look forward to meeting its needs by delivering a program that aims to increase resiliency and, in turn, better protect the city’s surrounding waters and public health.”

“The Department of Environmental Protection has put together an intelligent plan to make its wastewater infrastructure more resilient, and our team is very excited to partner with them and to bring AECOM’s global expertise to this important New York City program,” said Chris Toomey, AECOM senior vice president and program director.
Work is expected to be completed in five years.
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