Sean Kean Calls on Corzine to Revise Housing Quotas

Senator Sean Kean (R-Monmouth), a member of the Senate Labor Committee, called on the Corzine Administration to revise the housing mandates set by the Council on Affordable Housing in the wake of federally ordered revisions in state employment data.

"The housing quotas set by COAH were based on inaccurate data, including projections of job growth from commercial development that could be charitably described as educated guesses at best," Kean said. "Now we learn from media reports that the federal government has had serious questions about the state Department of Labor's monthly estimates of New Jersey's employment and has required state officials to reduce their estimates to conform to national standards.

"This is just one more bit of evidence that the Council on Affordable Housing set mandates using data that doesn't reflect reality. I urge Governor Corzine to order the Council to cancel its new rules, go back to Square One and start collecting reliable data."

The Record of Bergen County reported the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has ordered the state Department of Labor to stop factoring in data not accepted by the federal government when it calculates unemployment figures. In part because of this order, New Jersey saw its unemployment rate rise by a full percentage point in December, a huge gain for a single month.

"The Commissioner of Community Affairs and the Executive Director of COAH testified before the Senate that they have based their municipal housing obligations on jobs data supplied by the State Department of Labor," Kean said. "Municipalities filed plans on Dec. 31, 2008, using COAH-mandated housing numbers. Now that the numbers they have relied upon have been called into serious dispute, COAH should not make municipalities waste time and taxpayer money filing plans to build housing based on faulty data.

"It is not good enough for the Corzine Administration to say 'we will listen to your concerns' when they know, or should know, that their COAH numbers aren't worth the paper they are written on. They should admit their errors and start correcting them without being asked, so that taxpayers are not left to pay the tab for their lack of judgment."