Last week’s legislative hearing on the state’s no-bid contract with the Florida-based debris removal firm AshBritt produced some fireworks. It got particularly heated during an exchange between Democratic gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono and AshBritt President Randy Perkins. Sen. Joe Kyrillos (R-13), who was there, called the hearing disgraceful, dismissing it as political theater. He told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that the historic nature of Hurricane Sandy warranted using a contract that was already in place.
“It wasn’t a typical storm. It wasn’t a big snowstorm or your average nor’easter. This was a storm of the century, a 100-year-old storm, so we had to act very quickly,” said Kyrillos. “Now we have a contract in place with four companies. New York didn’t have one and of course 43 states in America didn’t have one. Connecticut did. They did theirs in 2008. So we were able to share that contract at 2008 prices, I may add, and get it out there for the towns and the counties and localities to use immediately if they chose to and some didn’t.”
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According to Kyrillos, if there is to be a hearing on anything Sandy-related, it should be on FEMA.
“FEMA [is] not doing a particularly fast and productive job it seems to me,” Kyrillos said. “They’re not reimbursing people fast enough. The governor himself said that a month or so ago. I just left the mayor of Sea Bright. It’s a tough agency to work with. Those are the kinds of things we ought to be looking at.”
Yesterday, Standard and Poor’s offered a negative outlook for the state and questioned Gov. Christie’s revenue projections. Without commenting on the rating agency’s report, Kyrillos said that while New Jersey needs job growth, there’s a limit to what state government can do.
“We can’t do much about the global economy, the national economy, why America has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, oil prices and the like,” he said. “So if the Congress and the president can get their act together, inject some certainty, some confidence into the American economy, it would do a lot to generate revenues in Trenton and all the state capitals.”