Christie administration denies Hoboken mayor’s bullying allegations

Hurricane Sandy left 80 percent of Hoboken, N.J. underwater. Its mayor has recently accused top Christie officials of withholding aid for political reasons. Photo by Flickr user WhatsAllThisThen

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration avowed that Hoboken, N.J., received $70 million of Hurricane Sandy relief funds and that the city has “in no way” trailed others in relief funding.

On Saturday, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said her lack of support for the governor’s favored projects was the reason she received only $342,000 out of her requested $100 million. In response to Zimmer’s allegations, Christie-appointed “Storm Czar” Marc Ferzan explained the requests drastically surpassed available funds.

“(The Federal Emergency Management Agency) allocated New Jersey $300 million and we received $14 billion in requests for resiliency initiatives,” Ferzan said. “$300 million versus $14 billion. That’s a big delta.”

Ferzan is the executive director of the Office of Recovery and Rebuilding, which received thousands of funding requests after Hurricane Sandy. The agency analyzed these “letters of intent” and scored 147 top applicants based on “objective analysis.” Hoboken, he says, was one of these selected grantees. Given the thousands of requests, the accusations that Hoboken received “limited disaster recovery” left Ferzan “scratching his head.”

But Ferzan’s comments did not address Zimmer’s strongest allegation that Christie’s Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Community Affairs, denied Hoboken relief funds because Zimmer’s planning board didn’t expedite a commercial development project, known as the Rockefeller project.

Earlier Monday, Lt. Gov. Guadagno said Zimmer’s accusations were “not only false” but also “illogical.” Christie’s administration then suggested that Zimmer’s accusations were part of her strategy to get the governor’s office to support her own development projects.

“So part of what I’m hoping comes out of this, by coming forward, is to say, Governor, please, support this Rebuild By Design competition,” Zimmer said Saturday on MSNBC.

According to NJTV reporter Michael Aron, who appeared on PBS NewsHour Weekend on Sunday, the allegations “play to a notion that Christie is a bully and uses strong-armed tactics.”

Christie, who is riding a wave of allegations which started with the George Washington Bridge controversy, is considered a leading Republican contender in the 2016 presidential race.

h/t Ruth Tam