August 12, 2016
The state can’t scrape up the money to fix the state’s roads and bridges, fully fund its schools or pay for the pensions of retired state workers. But, somehow, it found a way this week to approve an $800 million bond after previously authorizing $350 million in tax breaks for a $3.1 billion megamall in the Meadowlands.
The state’s Local Finance Board, an arm of the state Department of Community Affairs, this week approved the bond for the massive Meadowland America Dream shopping and entertainment complex, known during a previous incarnation as Xanadu. After two false starts attributable to the project’s inability to get private financing, the project was taken over in 2011 by Triple Five, a Canadian firm, nearly a decade after it was first approved.
Last week’s approval by the Local Finance Board, and the approval of a financing agreement a day earlier by the mall’s landlord, the N.J. Sports & Exposition Authority, came unaccompanied by any outrage from state lawmakers other than Michael Doherty, R-Warren.
Why the silence? Perhaps legislators didn’t want to call further attention to the irony of their providing bonding for a private venture at a time they can’t scrape up enough money for the state’s basic needs, despite having the highest property taxes in the nation.
https://www.app.com/story/opinion/editorials/2016/08/12/american-dream-meadowlands-bond/88634812/
