Christie orders legal reviews on all Sandy contracts that use federal money

At the end of a week of news stories that scrutinized the Sandy cleanup and rebuilding contracts awarded by his administration, Gov. Christie on Friday announced measures to improve transparency.

Christie issued an executive order directing Comptroller Matthew Boxer to perform legal reviews of procurement for all state Sandy contracts that use federal dollars.

Each state department involved with Sandy rebuilding must designate an "accountability officer" to deal with the comptroller on Sandy issues.

And although Christie earlier this week hedged on the creation of a transparency website, he said Friday all contracts awarded for Sandy-related work would now be posted online.

For New Jersey, the first batch of money from the $50 billion package for the Northeast authorized by Congress last month is $1.8 billion in Community Development Block Grants.

A plan for spending that money is being developed by a company, CDM Smith, that was fired last year from a similar job in Texas.

Christie has faced questions about that contract, first reported by The Inquirer, along with questions about the political influence of another company, AshBritt Inc., that won cleanup contracts in dozens of towns despite allegations by critics that it charges more than its competitors.

An AshBritt lobbyist is hosting a fund-raiser for Christie at his Virginia home at the end of the month, although Christie said Friday he was unaware of that when the event was scheduled. He said he only knew that it was being organized by Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Speaking at a Statehouse news conference, he said the transparency announcement had been in the works for some time and was unrelated to recent news stories about the controversies surrounding Sandy contracts.

"The only folks who care about AshBritt are the people who work for your newspaper," he told a reporter from the Newark Star-Ledger, which first reported on that company. "The fact of the matter is, you haven't had one municipality complain about AshBritt."

Christie spoke alongside Boxer, an independent official appointed by the Republican governor's Democratic predecessor, Jon S. Corzine. Boxer once worked for Christie in the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Legislative Democrats have been pushing for oversight measures on Sandy, and Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester) took credit for Christie's announcement Friday.

"I am glad the governor is adopting some of the recommendations first put forward by the Legislature to ensure taxpayer dollars do not fall victim to waste and abuse," Sweeney said in a statement. "These are only some of the ways we can ensure that misuse of Sandy funds does not occur, and we wish this announcement had come months ago, but better late than never."

Christie said he was also considering creating "integrity monitors," which he acknowledged Democrats had proposed. The Democratic proposal would require every Sandy contractor to hire a monitor to look out for wrongdoing.