governor chris christie you have no foreign policy experience. please name three people you consider insightful that you would rely on. let me pitch my republican brother ian brzezinski. i ve had a lot of good people folks like henry kissinger, brian hook, brian hoss, all people who have given me good advice. what percentage of sandy relief money has been given to new jersey sandy victims. when do you expect it all to be given out? that s up to the federal government because they are ones giving it out and it s their red tape that slows it down. jersey shore had their greatest season not just the greatest season since sandy their greatest season this year. all businesses are open. we have 306,000 families whose homes were destroyed are back in their homes in three years. sandy has been an enormous
there are some other things you have to deal with in this state as well. last night we brought you the story how the biggest contractor in new jersey was very quietly fired by the christie administration, which has offered no satisfaction explanation into what went down, and why the state of new jersey paid that contractor a ten and a half million settlement. today we got big news about the performance of the contractor, hgi, which had been tasked with distributing $780 million in funding to sandy victims in new jersey. data obtained by the fair share housing center through an open records request showed that nearly 80% of applicants were rejected for sandy relief money were found to be eligible upon repeal. one out of four applicants who was initially denied money ended up having that decision reversed. the data tracks with anecdotal evidence we heard from sandy victims and evidence that suggests hgi was not doing a
program. and hud recommends that they do, and new jersey just opted not to. there s no one really available to individual homeowners or renters through the process, it s very cumbersome and very difficult process. is there significant oversite of how this money is getting distributed? i don t think there is. there s an integrity monitor program that was signed by the governor, affected immediately. and to our knowledge has not been implemented. and would have been in play, should have been in play for belleville. it took ten months for them to appoint an integrity monitor. it appears we have a situation in which they weren t doing a good job. either that or the feds screwed up, the feds are saying no, don t look at us. it s really up to the federal government to look at new jersey. everybody needs to know what is going on. the more you look at it, the more you find.
you surprised to hear about that? i m not surprised, i think it was an important and courageous decision. in the long run, i think they re going to make money out of it rather than losing opinion it s going to help discourage smoking or help the 90% of smokers who want to quit to do so, there by saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. it will put great pressure on other companies, other pharma pharmacies to stop selling cigarettes or face inevitable legislation. you have been fighting this battle for a long time, right? as someone who looks at it, who sees it i ve come in at the tail end of it, where the stigmatization has been very effective. was it stigmatizing tobacco, preceded the companies losing power? or did they lose their power and that lead to it being able to successfully stigmatize smoke something. i think the simple answer is legal action.
repeal. one out of four applicants who was initially denied money ended up having that decision reversed. the data tracks with anecdotal evidence we heard from sandy victims and evidence that suggests hgi was not doing a very good job of disbursing the money. hgi did not respond to our request for comment. we heard back from the christie administration, which did not dispute the data, but placed the blame on fema. saying the fair share act investigated the high number of rejections and learned fema pry provided the state with inaccurate assessment data. we reached out to fema, and they basically said, no, that s not a fair assessment. the new jersey program is a state run program, eligibility is determined by the state of new jersey, at the state s request, fema required its individual assistance data which