Sniffing around at Fort Hancock
I was pleased to learn there will be an investigation into the National Park Service's lease agreement with Sandy Hook Partners. It is long overdue.
It would be preferable if the investigation were handled by someone other than the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, such as the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative agency. The odds of an impartial review would be much greater. But a review of the lease by the Interior's inspector general is better than nothing. It will be interesting to what comes of it.
At National Park Service properties in California and Arkansas, private developers had to prove they had financial backing before the Park Service signed a lease agreement with them. That wasn't the case at Fort Hancock, where Rumson developer James Wassel recently received his fourth extension to furnish proof of financial viability since signing a 60-year lease three years ago. It has been eight years since he was selected to rehabilitate 36 dilapidated buildings there.
This deal never smelled right. It's about time someone started sniffing around.
It would be preferable if the investigation were handled by someone other than the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, such as the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative agency. The odds of an impartial review would be much greater. But a review of the lease by the Interior's inspector general is better than nothing. It will be interesting to what comes of it.
At National Park Service properties in California and Arkansas, private developers had to prove they had financial backing before the Park Service signed a lease agreement with them. That wasn't the case at Fort Hancock, where Rumson developer James Wassel recently received his fourth extension to furnish proof of financial viability since signing a 60-year lease three years ago. It has been eight years since he was selected to rehabilitate 36 dilapidated buildings there.
This deal never smelled right. It's about time someone started sniffing around.
posted by Randy Bergmann at 5:58 PM
1 Comments:
Actually it's not overdue since there was a previous OIG investigation about 5 years ago which found no wrongdoing.
There is a financing committment.
As SSH & Pallone know full well it's standard that a final committment won't be made while their is unsettled litigation.
So they prevent the financing from being finalized by appealing after each coutroom loss and disengenously say the financing sohuld've been finalized long ago.
I can certainly understand why people prefer SH not be privately developed.
But that does not mean it's illegal.
So far 2 court rulings have found the award of the contract has been perfectly legal.
The Colemans who describe themselves as "grass roots" environmentalists live in one of the largest houses on the environmentally fragile cliffs above the Navesink River in Middletown, NJ.
SSH just lost a motion to try to stop what another court has just ruled is NJ DOTs apparently legal plan to replace the Highlands Bridge with a fixed span.
So far NONE of their claims of illegality has been upheld in the 8years SSH has been obstructing these projects
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