SO MUCH FOR A "SUBSTANTIAL, OPEN & PUBLIC DISCUSSION"

            Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., (R-Essex/Union/Morris/Somerset) issued the following statement after the Corzine Administration failed to fully comply with a request made under the “Open Public Records Act” for documents relating to the planned sale of the State’s toll roads.

             “The Corzine Administration’s stone-walling of a request for information pertaining to their toll road sale plan and the silence of his accomplices in the Legislature who voted to pursue this scheme should worry commuters and business owners.  Millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to prefect what may be the biggest toll hike that New Jersey commuters and business owners have ever seen, and  the response from the administration is that nobody is entitled to see what they spent over four million dollars on until after the election because it may prove ‘disruptive.’  If telling the truth to the public is so politically ‘disruptive’ to the administration and the legislators who voted to go forward with this reckless road sale plan, then they should listen to the people and abandon their scheme immediately.             “How can the administration simultaneously claim that they have a ‘voluminous’ amount of material relating to their plan, but cannot reveal a single document on their planned toll hikes to the public and their elected representatives?  The administration’s desperate effort to build a  wall of secrecy around the toll road sale until after the November election has resulted in a series of lame excuses and obfuscations that defy common sense.             “It is time for the Governor to stop this bureaucratic shell game about the details of his toll road scheme and disclose all the information his administration is holding from the public.”