Billionaire’s Foundation Abuses Now Threaten All State Parks Due To New Law Gov. Murphy Just Signed
State Parks Have A $720 Million Unfunded Maintenance Deficit
DEP Desperation For Funds Opens The Door To Abuses By Private Foundation
A quick note today to clarify DEP Commissioner LaTourette’s remarks and media coverage of Saturday’s public hearing on DEP’s Liberty State Park development plans.
NJ Spotlight praised DEP Commissioner LaTourette and reported that LaTourette:
“called out the [Fireman] task force for purposely misleading the public” (at time: 0:40)
But here is what LaTourette actually said:
“I regret that there is misinformation on this point.” (at time 3:23)
Apparently, NJ Spotlight does not know the difference between misinformation and disinformation – and this is not a minor semantic point. It goes to whether LaTourette is being strong or weak. He is being portrayed by Spotlight as strong when in fact just the opposite is true. He is being weak.
The Spotlight praise is false. LaTourette did not “call out” Fireman’s false information campaign, which is disinformation, not misinformation:
“Misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally misstating the facts.” (American Psychological Association)
If someone is “purposely misleading the public”, they are engaged in disinformation, not misinformation.
LaTourette is a trained and licensed lawyer. He traffics in words and uses them with precision. He knows this. If he mis-spoke, he should issue a public statement clarifying the issue and correcting his error.
But I don’t think he misspoke. I think he is afraid to “call out” Fireman. I think misled the public intentionally. The Commissioner not only gaslighted on the word he used, but he used the passive voice and did not name names. Pathetic.
The public is being duped and gaslighted once again.
Because if DEP can’t call out billionaire Fireman on this kind of blatant abuse, it means that they are in a weak political position.
And if that is the case, the final plans for the Park will be influenced by Fireman’s power.
Which takes me to the Statewide issues that Fireman’s “People’s Park Foundation” has exposed so clearly.
Gov. Murphy just signed a Democratically sponsored bill into law that creates a statewide private “State Parks And Open Space Foundation”, see: P.L.2023, c.256. It is modeled on the Fireman Foundation and is subject to exactly the same corruption and abuses the Fireman Foundation has engaged in, see:
DEP Commissioner LaTourette testified to the Legislature that State Parks have a $720 million unfunded deficit in State Parks maintenance. DEP is desperate for money. The Legislature is not appropriating any and the previously Constitutionally dedicated $48 million per year was stolen by the “Keep It Green” Open Space campaign by greedy conservation groups, see: the Bergen Record:
Some environmental groups blame a voter-approved 2014 constitutional amendment. It shifted revenues from the state’s Corporation Business Tax away from capital improvements. Instead, they bolster Green Acres, a taxpayer-financed program that has preserved more than 650,000 acres of open space in its 55 years. …
Mark Texel, head of the New Jersey Division of Parks and Forestry, called it a “massive blow” and said in a Facebook post soon after the vote that it was “the darkest day I have faced in my professional career.” …
“We had a plan to really tackle some of these major capital projects that had been deferred for many, many years,” Texel said. “And we were making progress. Suddenly now our capital budget is having the legs cut out from underneath it. … It was disappointing, I admit. I was very disappointed.”…
Bill Wolfe, director of the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said he didn’t believe that voters in 2014 knew this would happen.
He accused NJ Keep It Green of “intentionally, knowingly” stripping state parks of capital funding to finance Green Acres so they wouldn’t have to ask voters to approve a bond. That, he said, let open space groups avoid a public brawl with Governor Christie, who has demanded no new debt be placed on taxpayers. The coalition, he said, “didn’t have the spine to fight for the money.”
That financial desperation means that DEP will approve virtually anything the new private Foundation proposes for parks development (especially when their is no organized advocacy group like Friends of Liberty State Park turning out hundreds of people to public hearings and no media coverage. And there are no public hearings required by the new State Parks Foundation law anyway.)
I gave Commissioner LaTourette an opportunity to correct his error (if he misspoke) and explain the new Parks Foundation law, see: