Corzine sees protecting Sandy Hook as priority
By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH — Given his druthers, Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., would like to see Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook remain as it is without the planned development that will bring in businesses, bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants and pubs.

"I would rather leave it alone — leave it in its current state," he said. "I guess I come down on the side of the environmentalist. I think the less we do in tampering, the better we will be."

But, Corzine also said, the National Park Service can’t look to Congress to appropriate the money that’s needed to rehabilitate the badly deteriorating houses on Officers’ Row and other buildings on the grounds of the historic former Army base that Sandy Hook Partners plans to overhaul.

"It’s an issue of prioritizations that we as a nation are expressing by the people we go back to from Congress," he said in explaining why funding for the national parks has lagged. "They (members of Congress) have other things that the public is also asking for — for instance, a prescription drug benefit for seniors under Medicare, one that’s universal and doesn’t just do what we do here in New Jersey where it goes only to low- and moderate-income families. They want to see something that works for all families. Those are expensive projects."

Corzine, who was at the Ocean Place Resort and Conference Center, Long Branch, to address a teen-age summit on tobacco use, said in an interview recently that the shortage of federal funding for the national parks illustrates the sometimes painful decisions Congress must make, given current budget constraints.

"There is not enough support from Congress to adequately fund the programs for the National Park Service for maintenance and expansion," he said. "There’s actually more money for growing the Park Service than there has been for maintaining what we have, and it’s a dangerous shortfall. But you have to put that into the construct of what we have.

"I have no sympathy for the size of last year’s tax cut," he continued. "I have a sympathy for the tax cut, but the size of it I felt was irresponsible when relative to the needs of the prescription drug benefit or education or the environment or parks or environmental cleanup. We’ve got enormous needs.

"I think investments in those activities would have paid big dividends which would have made more money or produced more wealth in society, and we just turned our back on it," he said.

Corzine voted against the tax cut of $1.7 trillion. He said he would have supported a tax cut of $500 billion to $800 billion. He noted that one one of the first bills he introduced after taking his seat in the Senate 16 months ago was a proposal to have a 10 percent bracket added to the tax tables.

"That would have provided a significant benefit for more moderate- and lower-income families," he said. "We could have done it for a much more modest sum, and it would have gotten to the people who need it the most."

Corzine called last year’s tax cut "overreaching" and pointed out that the House of Representatives last week passed legislation that would make permanent the President Bush’s tax cut that he said would result in "another $400 billion out the door."

"We don’t have the money left for these other purposes. We just don’t have the resources for the fundamental needs of investing in parks or beach replenishment," he said.

"To give you a dimension, I was fighting for a piece in the budget resolution coming out of the Senate for a $500 billion program over 10 years," he added, referring to a program for prescription drug benefits for seniors under Medicare.

"The president has offered $190 billion," he noted. "The problem is that to have a program that matches what the United States Senate gets, or federal employees get, would cost $750 billion a year. To get a program that matches what the military gets would cost $1.3 trillion over the same three-year period.

"My point is we can’t have all these tax cuts and do the kinds of things that I think the American people are talking to us about," he said.

Corzine said he thought money would continue to be forthcoming at the federal level for the beach replenishment project in Monmouth County. A second round of sand pumping is taking place in Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach this summer, part of the scheduled periodic renourishment.

Although Congress has to fight the president — Bush now and Clinton before him — every year on the amount of funding and to keep the present funding formula of 65 percent federal and 35 percent state and local, projects that already have been started should be OK, he said.

"For new projects, it’s going to be a little harder," he said.

"You’ve got a slightly different issue here in the state," the senator added.

Corzine pointed out that while there’s been no cutback yet in the monies actually appropriated for the state’s share of the cost of beach replenishment, Gov. Jim McGreevey has proposed scaling back the money put into the dedicated fund which in recent years has provided $25 million a year for shore protection.

The state also faces serious budget constraints, Corzine noted.

The senator said he was not worried about any environmental "cost" or negative impact from the beach filling. He said it hasn’t been shown to him, objectively, that there are any serious long-term environmental issues associated with it.

"In fact, making sure these beaches are here is, I think, an environmentally sound process of protecting the whole ecosystem as we know it," he said.

"And it’s quite clear," he added, "that the Jersey Shore is an enormous economic engine for the state. There are those who would argue that there is natural erosion that should be allowed to take place, but I just don’t see how that fits in with a realistic view of where we need to be economically."

Turning to the controversial renewed disposal of dredge spoils at the Mud Dump site just off Sandy Hook, Corzine said he felt the issue would go away on its own merits with the growing demand for the spoils for fill on land.

The senator said the agreement to stop the dumping brokered by former Vice President Al Gore a couple of years ago allowed spoils that met federal standards as clean could continue to be disposed of at the Mud Dump.

"But, frankly, this is an issue that’s going to die of its own merits because there’s a lot of competition now for land-based use of dredging spoils, believe it or not," he said. "If we actually got New York to take up their fair share interest in this…we would clearly have this problem resolved long-term."

Corzine said demand increased with Brownfields legislation passed by Congress last year, which created an enormous need to cap and protect the cleanup of Brownfields sites so they can be put back into economic use.

"Dredge spoils are actually one of the ways that that gets done, so we ought to get moving on that," he said, adding dredge spoils also are in demand for covering Superfund sites.

Corzine said he is seeking to reinstate the Superfund tax on the oil and chemical industries so as to raise the money needed for their cleanup. He said he and Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, D–N.J., are introducing a bill in the Senate to reinstate the tax and Reps. Frank J. Pallone Jr. and Rush Holt, both D-N.J., are sponsoring similar legislation in the House of Representatives.

Corzine noted that New Jersey has 111 Superfund sites and said the state probably has another 25 that, if the federal Environmental Protection Agency were doing the kind of research it did to identify the first 111, could be added as Superfund sites. He said five or six are already just waiting for the authorization to be declared Superfund sites.

"We have 59 separate sites in New Jersey out of those 111 where the cleanup plans have already been engineered and designed and are ready to go," he said. "They just need to be funded, and there are no resources in the Superfund trust fund. The only money that’s coming in is out of general revenues, and because of the budget shortfalls, the Bush administration is cutting back on the general revenues going in there and we are no longer tapping into polluter pays."

Corzine pointed out that the tax, imposed when the Superfund law was passed in 1980, lapsed in 1995. He said it had produced a lot of money for the cleanup through the years of its existence but has since been exhausted.

"Now we have the sites ready to go and we need the dough, but there’s no money in the Superfund trust fund other than general tax revenues," he said. "So what we’re trying to do is reinstate the Superfund tax."

Corzine said he enjoys being in the Senate and is honored to be doing what he’s doing. But, he noted, he has experienced some frustration in adjusting to the slower pace from his days on Wall Street, where he headed Goldman Sachs.

"I was a day trader, a guy who bought and sold, … (and) my time horizon was 30 seconds or an hour at the most," he said. "Then I got into management and management was longer term, maybe strategic horizons of five or 10 years. Now you’re talking about constitutional issues, and it’s really a much slower-moving process.

"But I tell you, .. there are unbelievably good things going on in our society," he said. "I get up every morning and say this is very worthwhile, more worthwhile than anything I’ve ever done in my life."