Let’s hope Chris Christie once again makes his voice heard on how politicians are mishandling Hurricane Sandy relief.
Little more than two weeks after New Jersey’s governor denounced congressional Republicans for not passing a Sandy relief bill, the House on Tuesday approved $51 billion in aid.
Pending Senate action, the House vote will end a nearly three-month wait on federal funds for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut residents trying to rebuild after the historic storm.
Some of that wait had to do with the negotiations over the Jan. 1 expiration of the Bush tax cuts that took Congress down to the wire. Some, however, was because Republicans balked at voting for a bill that included much unrelated spending (e.g., new rooftops for the Smithsonian) at a time when federal spending is out of control.
And some had to do with GOP concerns that extreme weather events are increasingly declared disasters.
As Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) wrote in The Washington Times, by “nationalizing disaster” we are giving states and localities an incentive to abdicate more and more of their responsibilities in hopes that Uncle Sam will ride to the rescue.
Our view is that these are precisely the questions that ought to be raised by men and women who have responsibility for the public purse. Those who attacked House Republicans for not simply waving the bill through would have more credibility had they also criticized the extra goodies loaded into that relief package.
Now those critics have an opportunity to show their denunciations can go both ways. Because New Jersey’s Democratic-controlled Senate has just given the nation an indication of the games local pols are willing to play.
On Monday, Jersey’s Senate expanded its “Project Labor Agreement” law to cover the kind of projects likely to need rebuilding post-Sandy. Under this law, only companies with workforces that are 80 percent unionized are eligible to do the work.
That’s a costly rule: Studies show that PLAs add anywhere from 18 percent to 30 percent to construction costs.
Surely the point here is that the priority for state and federal dollars should be rebuilding in the most efficient and cost-effective way.
We trust that those who were so quick to savage Republicans in Washington will be equally scathing about this extraordinary act of public cynicism by Democrats in Trenton.
When running for office, Gov. Christie identified PLAs as one more thing that made New Jersey too costly.
Now would be an especially good time to repeat that point.