Hudson loses $4.5 million in waste disposal aid from state
Saturday, January 16, 2010
By AMY SARA CLARK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
Hudson County municipalities are likely to see as much as a 13 percent increase in their waste disposal fees after the Hudson County Improvement Authority lost some $4.5 million in state aid, county officials announced yesterday.
"It's a real kick in the pants coming from the outgoing administration at this point," said Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise.
The $4.5 million gap would translate into a 13 percent increase in solid waste disposal fees for the municipalities. But the HCIA hopes to find a way to reduce the hit, said Norman Guerra, HCIA's executive.
The funding is used to make yearly payments on a bond of some $60 million that the HCIA took out in the late 1980s to buy land to build a waste disposal plant, Guerra said.
The HCIA bought 100 acres at the Koppers Koke Industrial Site in Kearny for the plant after the Florio administration mandated that each county was to have its own waste disposal plant. But a few years later the Whitman administration reversed the mandate. The "Solid Waste Debt Service Aid" program was eventually created to help counties make payments on the land they'd bought for the plants, and in 2005 Hudson started getting the funding, Guerra said.
In 2005, Hudson County got a grant of $7 million; in 2006, it got $6.5 million, and in 2007 and 2008 it got $4.5 million, said Guerra.
Tom Vincz, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, said Hudson didn't get the money this year because it didn't apply, and that it is still welcome to make an application.
But DeGise called the assertion "baloney."
He said that all the HCIA has had to do in past years was put the anticipated amount as a line item in the budget.
The HCIA got conditional approval from the New Jersey Division of Local
Government Services of the budget in June, said Guerra.
"We did nothing different this year from every other year," said DeGise said.
Burlington, Camden, Mercer and Sussex counties applied for and received the aid for this year, Vincz said.
DeGise said he would like to know whether those municipalities applied in a different manner than Hudson, but state officials could not be reached yesterday evening to respond.