By David Cruz
NJ Today
Gov. Chris Christie was in Bergen County today, announcing a new solar energy initiative with PSEG officials, but ended up answering questions on how much sunshine is appropriate when it comes to the actions of the Port Authority and other large quasi-public agencies.
The governor took the state helicopter to today’s event and entered to some bouncy new theme music as he joined officials from PSEG, and local unions to break ground on a new solar farm on a former brownfield site in Hackensack. Christie touted the jobs that the project will create and the further greening of the state.
“It’s about creating jobs and using solar energy as a way to create jobs,” he said.
WATCH VIDEO:
About 60 to 70 jobs before the project is completed in October, according to PSEG CEO Ralph Izzo, who said the utility will be expanding its solar initiatives across the state.
“This week we are filing for proposals to invest up to $883 million in solar projects throughout the state,” said Izzo. “This will enable us to build more grid-connected projects on landfills, brownfields and government properties. We’ll also be able to build more solar on warehouse roofs, parking lots all around New Jersey.”
Whether it’s a ribbon-cutting or a groundbreaking, the highlight of any Chris Christie appearance is the press conference that accompanies the event. Today, the subject matter was politics.
Specifically, the governor was telling lawmakers to do what he says and not what he does when it comes to political patronage at quasi public agencies like the Port Authority and the Turnpike Authority, where a couple of the governor’s failed Supreme Court nominees – Phil Kwon and Bruce Harris – have recently ended up.
“The state legislature made a big mistake by not putting Phil Kwon on the bench and I’m not going to perpetuate the attack they put on him by saying that Phil Kwon is not qualified to do anything else in public life,” snapped the governor. “He’s extraordinarily qualified to be the new deputy counsel at the Port Authority; the Port Authority is lucky to have him. Same with Bruce Harris. We’ve been without a deputy counsel there for the better part of a year and a half because we’ve been looking for the right person.”
But state Senator Loretta Weinberg says the governor should have signed the Port Authority oversight bill – which he vetoed last week – to put tighter checks and balances on the agency in order to avoid strictly political appointments, yes, but to also force the agency’s commissioners to be more responsive to residents.
“[The bill] covers hearings for toll increases,” she noted. “We have huge toll increases – another one coming in the next couple of months in December – affecting our Bergen County residents and not one of those commissioners, at least a couple of whom live in Bergen County, could find five minutes to come to the hearing, and listen to the public or pretend to listen to the public?”
By the time Weinberg was through with her mini-press conference, the governor was back on board, ascending, already a couple of hundred feet above his opposition, and rising.