Where Does Governor Christie's Rainbow End?

For Immediate Release Friday, March 15, 2013

Contact: Rob Duffey, (973) 273-3363 or rob@njworkingfamilies.org

Local Activists Deliver “Pot of Gold” to Citibank to Protest Governor’s $12.3m grant

Advocates decry Citi’s layoff of 276 Englewood Cliffs Employees; lack of jobs created by Christie’s programs

Englewood – Activists representing over eighty community, labor and civic organizations delivered a ‘pot of gold’ to the Citibank branch of Englewood on Friday to protest Governor Christie’s decision to award the bank $12.3 million in taxpayer dollars even after it fired Englewood employees.

“Citibank must have the ‘luck of the Irish’ to receive $12.3 million from Chris Christie despite laying off over nearly 300 New Jerseyans,” said Rob Duffey of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance. “It seems like in good times or bad this Governor always has a pot of gold ready for corporations. The problem is that there don’t seem to be any actual jobs at the end of the corporate subsidy rainbow.”

Citibank is among the many corporations that have been awarded over $2.3 billion subsidies from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) during Governor Christie’s term. It’s allowed to collect $12.3 million in income taxes from employees it moved from Wall Street to Jersey City under the terms of a 2011 Business Employment Incentive Program (BEIP) grant. Within months of receiving the award Citibank laid off 276 employees in Englewood Cliffs.

Protestors outlined several high-profile grants they claim are suspect. In 2011 the Christie Administration awarded British corporation Pearson Education $82 million in state subsidies to move 700 jobs from its current location in Upper Saddle River to a new facility in Hoboken. At the same time it received $50 million from New York to ship an additional 600 New Jersey jobs out of the state altogether. In 2012 Prudential was awarded $210 million through an Urban Transit Hub (UTH) tax credit to cover 400 new jobs the company said they were going to create anyway.

Speakers pointed to New Jersey’s relatively weak economy as a clear indication that tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations had failed to create the jobs the Governor promised. The state’s unemployment rate is currently 9.6%, the 4^th highest in the nation and unchanged from when Governor Christie took office amidst a global recession. In 2011 the state ranked 47^th in economic growth.

Coalition leaders maintained that these grants have come at a cost to essential services and investments that could have helped New Jersey better weather the recession and join the nation in its economic recovery.

“Chris Christie paid for his failed jobs program with cuts to investments that help people get jobs or keep the jobs they have,” said Carol Gay, President of the Industrial Union Council. “He’s slashed scholarships for college students, after-school care that lets parents work full-time, and Bergen County schools to pad big business’ bottom line.”

Speakers decried the lack of any new jobs proposal in the state budget Governor Christie unveiled last week. In his budget address Christie pointed to $547 million in business tax cuts, $257 million of which were approved during his administration.

"New Jersey has paid these corporations to keep and provide jobs, but instead were losing more jobs," said Magalye Matos, an Englewood parent. "Even worse, the Governor is paying for these corporate subsidies with cuts to education and affordable after-school care. Bergen County has been hit from all sides, and the only winners seem to be the banks and developers.”

Better Choices for New Jersey represents over 80 organizations including the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, New Jersey Communities United, New Jersey Citizen Action, and the New Jersey Policy Perspective. The campaign calls for increased investment in critical public services and long-term solutions to New Jersey’s economic crisis. Some of its revenue proposals were adopted in the budget for FY 2010.     

 



  

Over 100 employees were
let go from the Englewood
Public Schools in
2012. The positions were
abolished
and these employees
 were replaced with
independent contractors.