Mayor Says Christie Refused Sandy Aid Unless She Approved Development
New Jersey mayor Dawn Zimmer revealed that the administration of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie withheld Sandy relief money for Hoboken on MSNBC's Up with Steve Kornacki this Saturday.
Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Christie's community affairs commissioner Richard Constable apparently told Zimmer she would not receive the money unless she signed off on a redevelopment plan. The plan, which was to award the Rockefeller Group the right to redevelop several blocks of Hoboken, would have been a very lucrative deal for Christie.
But after Zimmer requested $127 million in Sandy aid, all she got was enough money to cover a single back-up generator and $200,000 in grants. Even though Christie came to Hoboken and assured residents they could count on him, his administration came back with less than 1% of what Hoboken asked for in relief.
Christie's administration, unsurprisingly, vehemently denies Zimmer's claims, deeming them "outlandishly false." But Zimmer has emails, public records and even her own personal diary entries as evidence. In one entry, she writes:
"I thought he was honest. I thought he was moral. I thought he was something very different. This week I found out he's cut from the same corrupt cloth that I have been fighting for the last four years."
Withholding Sandy relief money and then technically black-mailing the Hoboken mayor because she didn't approve a Rockefeller development deal can't be that bad for Christie, right? It's not like he's done anything bad for the New Jersey people recently because a public official wouldn't do what he said.