Disaster Capitalism Parts I, II, III – Wednesday’s Roundup

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County Prosecutor Damon Tyner is facing a lawsuit over gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. This follows up on the mortgage-fraud allegations and allegations Tyner futzed around in the Kauffman case improperly.

Elsewhere in prosecutors, State A.G. Gurbir Grewal has been asked to look into that $55,000 that PSE&G gave to a Norcross-affiliated PAC right after the Norcross-affiliated state legislature passed a few hundred million dollars in subsidies for PSE&G’s nuclear plants.

Politico doesn’t say who asked the A.G. to look into the $$$ but I know it wasn’t me. Was it you? I guess it was Phil Murphy. The story cites “two senior Murphy administration sources.”

In unrelated news, the state comptroller released its audit of New Jersey tax incentive programs, and it is “scathing” according to Joe Hernandez at WHYY. Politico’s Matt Friedman says they’ve awarded $11 billion in incentives “while basically taking companies’ word for it that they’ve created the jobs promised.” And he cites one instance where a company got $29 million and created negative jobs. Here’s the report summary. Remember that time CRDA gave Harrah’s $45 million of its own taxes back to build a conference center (and create jobs) and instead the company filed for bankruptcy and cut jobs? Yeah.

Phil Murphy, per Katherine Landergan, wants to cut the GROW NJ program from about $1 billion (its size in 2017) to $200 million, while Norcross-affiliated legislator Steve Sweeney has said the program is swell as is.

Do you ever get the feeling this is why those two are fighting? I do!

Elsewhere in disaster capitalism, a state appeals court ruled Glassboro couldn’t seize some land it wanted through eminent domain without a plan for what to do with it and that the, “mere ‘stockpiling’ of real estate that might, hypothetically, be useful for a redevelopment project in the future” wasn’t good enough.

That sounds like it might have local implications.

For more feats of journalism…

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