Good news -- the
New York Times editorial about Christie's 2.7-cents-on-the-dollar ExxonMobil settlement delivers considerably more substance than its title promises:
Quote:
Chris Christie’s Exxon Settlement Is Bad for New Jersey
The story began in 2004, when...as commissioner of environmental protection...I (Bradley M. Campbell) authorized the complaint against Exxon for decades of damage done to the natural resources surrounding the company’s Bayway and Bayonne operations on Arthur Kill and Newark Bay, which are at the heart of the New York Harbor estuary...
Having conferred with Mr. Christie on past spill cases while he was the United States attorney for New Jersey, I felt he would take seriously the Department of Environmental Protection’s role as a trustee and steward of the state’s natural resources...
Exxon('s)...challenge to its liability was rejected in 2007...(but) Exxon kept on fighting for nearly eight more years... I was encouraged when (the Christie) administration continued to pursue the case, and...(it went) to trial last year...I (was)...one of the witnesses called by Exxon to testify...(They) swung away at the state’s case...but never landed a punch...
The result is a disgrace...Former colleagues of mine in state government...have told me that Mr. Christie’s chief counsel inserted himself into the case, elbowed aside the attorney general and career employees who had developed and prosecuted the litigation, and cut the deal favorable to Exxon...
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Christie's general counsel is Chris Porrino, who replaced Charles McKenna, who was on his way to becoming New Jersey's attorney general
until his career path was blocked by Bridge(t)-Gate. The current attorney general is Jon Jay Hoffman -- and between his not having been in the running for the job; the ExxonMobil settlement being such an important deal; and Christie having a reputation of not knowing what is staff is up to, he should have Porrino looking over Hoffman's shoulder.
Quote:
NJ.com: ...An examination of Porrino's most recent financial disclosure filing detailing his net worth revealed his stake in ExxonMobil through one of his mutual funds...(H)e owned (a) share of more than 20 stock and bond funds, including the Schwab Fundamental U.S. Company Index Fund. The Schwab portfolio lists its biggest holding as ExxonMobil Corp., representing 4.6 percent of its assets...
Kevin Roberts...(a) spokesman for the governor's office...said there was no conflict. "Any suggestion that Mr. Porrino's publicly disclosed ownership of a mutual fund that holds a small amount of ExxonMobil stock within its diverse portfolio of investments is somehow a conflict of interest is flatly wrong...Mr. Porrino has no direct stake in ExxonMobil and his interest in the mutual fund is an entirely passive, indirect investment over which he has no control."
The state's Uniform Ethics Code says only that no state officer or employee "should have any interest, financial or otherwise, direct or indirect, or engage in any business or transaction or professional activity, which is in substantial conflict with the proper discharge of his/her duties in the public interest."
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ExxonMobil netted nearly $79 billion last year (unless corporate liability policies are that large). So they stood to lose a more than a tenth of it to the settlement -- even to them, that's not chump change. Nonetheless, the the difference between $225 million and $9 billion is VERY substantial, and if it stood to put a dent in MY mutual fund earnings, I would certainly feel more than a little conflicted!
News of the settlement wasn't supposed to break until April 6. But when Christie realized that he wasn't going to get applauded like, well, Bruce Springsteen over this, he
outsourced the blame:
Quote:
Gov. Chris Christie says the controversial settlement agreement with Exxon Mobil is "actually...really nice..." and blasted The New York Times for not getting its facts straight...
(S)peaking...at a town hall event in Somerville, (he) stressed the $225 million the oil giant agreed to pay is on top of the billions Exxon will dole out to pay for cleanup at contaminated sites in New Jersey. "They have to fix everything that they polluted to state standards, and there is no cap on what they have to pay...They're going to have to clean up everything no matter what it costs, and we're going to get the $225 million on top of it," Christie said. "If you read The New York Times, you'd never know this..."
"This is a good deal...for Exxon," (says) Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club... "Under the original order, Exxon would have had to restore the site, which is more than a clean-up or remediation. Exxon would have to remove all the oil and chemicals then restore the wetlands to the state they were in before the spill. Now Exxon can just cap the site, which is not really a clean-up. This would leave tons of oil and chemicals in the ground, saving Exxon millions of dollars."
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So the choices were between restoring the polluted areas to pre-pollution condition and ensuring that they simply can't pollute any further; and between putting a financial cap on the bill versus putting a physical cap on the pollution. And somewhere in between, nearly nine billion dollars slips away from New Jersey's coffers.
ExxonMobil must be proud that they're being given the responsibility of the cleanup rather than the state hiring someone else. But they must be feeling pretty damned guilty, too. Now, here's how it's
supposed to work in America:
The plaintiff tells the court what they think they should be paid by the defendant, and why. The defendant tries to talk the plaintiff into taking less out of fear that the court will make them pay more. If the court decides the plaintiff is asking for too much money, the court will award the plaintiff get less money. If the plaintiff allows the defendant to decide that the plaintiff is asking for too much money, the plaintiff will most likely get even less money than the court would award: The actual legal term for that is "getting screwed." The thing is, Christie himself started out as a lawyer -- doesn't he understand any of that?