what do you expect to happen to you in the next week or so? i m going to be evicted. i m going to be homeless once again. the director of new jersey s housing and mortgage finance agency defended the new brunswick apartment towers saying 48 of the 238 future apartments are going to be affordable and advertised to sandy victims. and although the tower, itself, is not in a hard-hit town, it is in one of the nine counties declared a disaster area. he made an announcement to the development community that you have any projects in those nine counties that would generate affordable housing, bring them on. that was a report by chris glorioso for the local nbc station in new york about federal money for sandy relief going to a new apartment tower in a new jersey town called new brunswick that was not hard hit by hurricane sandy. that story broke after the newark star-ledger wrote up a story about a use of federal money for sandy relief. the town of belleville, new jersey, got $6 mill
politics has played absolutely no role in disaster recovery. but new jersey s largest paper, the newark star ledger said christie used sandy money as a political slush fund, and says, quote, this was about politics and that is simply wrong. sandy victims everywhere should be furious. joining me now is bob ingle. he is author of chris christie: the inside story of his rise to power. bob, first, thanks for being here tonight. glad to be here, rev. how serious are all of these questions about the sandy relief funds? i think it s very serious. but one thing you have to keep in mind, you know how federal regulations are, you get a stack about that high. and within that, the locals are given a lot of leeway to do things as they want to do. sure. now what the administration has said and what you just repeated is there is no politics
devastated by sandy in the same way that hoboken, which was 80% under water at the height of the storm was, in that project that christie directed the sandy money towards. it had been in the works for a long time, well before the storm hit. as the star ledger reported, sandy was barely mentioned at the 20-minute ground-breaking ceremony. it was built primarily to allow seniors to retire in their home town, not as a way to provide shelter to sandy victims. bellville is part of essex county, one of the largest and most democratic friendly counties in new jersey. christie has cultivated key political alliances with top democrats in the county. the county s executive, joe divicenzio was the most prominent to endorse him. the political machine that produced him in the northward of newark, has long been suspect the of quietly boosting christie in his first campaign for
priority, but you can t keep people who were affected by sandy out. if it were to happen we had extra spaces and someone from sandy needed to relocate we could look into that possibly. the only promise they have gotten from the developer is that it was marketed to sandy victims. we re talking $6 million. it s not a small amount of money. in the broad amount of $50 million in government appropriations it is. but particularly for the folks in belleville, that is a lot of money on the ground for a project that the local mayors really wanted. the issue that i think a lot of people start to have is, is this sandy money just a slush fund sitting in the governor s bank account? what is the process whereby this money is getting from the federal government that authorized and appropriated it, to people who need the money because they were hit by sandy? right, and there s there have been calls for more strict oversight.
work during hurricane katrina and received criticism. got one of the largest contracts to help sandy victims apply for aid in new jersey. there s been a lot of sandy victims in new jersey. a lot of paperwork lost. people not able to answer bake questions about how to apply for these grants, and without any public notification, the administration terminated their contract. seems there s a legal dispute. we don t understand what s going on with that, if the state has the capacity to absorb this work. so democrats are calling for answers, and we re waiting to hear what they are. answers and more transparency. heather hadden, good to see you. thank you. and when you thought the credit card story couldn t get any worse it does. what you need to know. next. [ male announcer ] here s a question for you: