officials barely mentioned sandy when they talked about the project, and belleville's mayor told the-ledger" he didn't know of any people in town displaced from their homes by the storm. a few weeks before the big announcement in belleville about the senior center, that town's democratic mayor planned to endorse chris christie for re-election because, "i think the governor is is going to help the town of belleville with certain projects that we need." a couple of weeks after chris christie announced the project was going through, the local county executive also a democrat added his endorsement for chris christie's re-election. so there are these questions about that sandy money that went to new brunswick which wasn't all that hard hit by sandy. right after questions are raised about sandy money that went to belleville which wasn't all that hard hit by sandy. all that, of course, came after steve kornacki broke the story on this network about allegations concerning sandy relief money in hoboken. a town that was really hard hit by sandy. mayor dawn zimmer told steve on msnbc that the c

people have to look at that, belleville and new brunswick. the folks in the room that our producers were shooting last night have to look at this and say, this is a rigged game. >> the people who were in galloway on tuesday night, there were 200 people there not all of them got the opportunity to be heard. i think there are lots and lots of residents very rightly saying, what is going on here? why is this process seemingly not fair? where is our federal government making sure the process is going the way it's supposed to be? >> where is the federal government is the big question. residents in new jersey, just go out and hire wolf & samson to represent you in these proceedings. heather haddon at the "wall street journal" and stacey bergen. >>> coming up, this guy again. >> do you like green eggs and ham? i do not like them, sam i am. >> turns out ted cruz doesn't like the senate minority leader much, either. extraordinary behind the scenes revelation of what exactly happened in the senate yesterday. seriously amazing intrigue in the senate cha

christie helped channel $6 million in money to a senior complex in belleville years before the storm.hen the democratic mayor went on to endorse christie les than two weeks after the funding was announced. who in new jersey is minding the store on sandy money? our own intrepid steve kornacki reported, it may be nobody. in order to protect against waste, fraud and abuse. that law went into effect march of last year. and guess when new jersey treasury department says it began putting a law, a law signed more than ten months ago into practice? not until january of this year. 2014. that's right. the sandy money has been going out the door but it appears integrity monitors were not put in place until last month in the wake of the scandal that is now engulfing the christie administration. joining me now, kevin walsh, associate director of fair share housing center. you guys have been doing incredible work in trying to get to the bottom of where this sandy aid is going. today, marc ferzan, the sandy oversight czar that chris christie personally appointed, he gave a kind of conference call pr

just on the pure question of, okay, the reporting on the new developments in new brunswick, in bellevillech transparency should there have been, whether you had a democrat, a republican, a good or a bad, a moderate or an extreme governor. how much should people know, and how much do they really pay attention when a new, you know, project breaks ground. >> right. so state officials, i'll just, you know, give their perspective here, have said that these projects were within the nine affected counties by sandy. so, they might not be an area like new brunswick, like you said, wasn't very hard hit by the storm, neither was belleville. but these are within counties that they are giving funding, those nine affected counties, and the administration says those will help people in those accou counties. so going forward, there's going to be a lot more scrutiny about these projects, the $1.4 billion coming up. there's public hearings coming about this and i expect to see a lot of people questioning why these projects, how are they decided? we really don't know. we haven't seen the bids for these proj

there's a senior center in belleville that gets money, a luxury high rise in new brunswick. the people you are working with, the people that are sweating, that are getting rejected, what does that look like in the state right now, how do you say this money granted by the federal government is being dispersed in an efficient and fairway. >> people don't know what they're doing or don't care enough to know what they're doing. we asked them multiple times for the state to include housing counseling as part of their program. and hud recommends that they do, and new jersey just opted not to. there's no one really available to individual homeowners or renters through the process, it's very cumbersome and very difficult process. >> is there significant oversite of how this money is getting distributed? >> i don't think there is. there's an integrity monitor program that was signed by the governor, affected immediately. and to our knowledge has not been implemented. and would have been in play, should have been in play for belleville. >> it took ten months for them to appoint an int

a senior center in belleville, new jersey. problems the people in town hall had today were smaller than $6 million. all of their problems could have been dealt with with what we gave away in a situation where there was absolutely no hurricane damage at all that was being addressed. >> well, you know, this is the inherent balance that has to be struck when it comes to disaster relief. on the other hand, there is a legitimate concern that the money should get out fast and quickly and should go to those most intimately affected by the problem. on the other hand, there needs to be effective oversight over it. it can't just be passed around to people who don't need it. used for purposes that are maybe unethical or corrupt. chris crist tree to his credit badgered the federal government when it wasn't there handing the state of new jersey a check for the disaster relief. he got that money, but part of the process, part of what he has to deal with is go through this bureaucratic red tape and it's for a legitimate reason. >> there's a

that have been years in the work, and belleville wasn't very damaged by sandy. when we still have thousands of families out of their home without enough money to put them back, that's pretty outrageous too. so that weighed in somewhat. >> so clearly, you don't necessarily accept his very firm denials. >> well, his denials are whether he knew this was going on at the time. we are told by david wildstein and his chief enforcer at the port authority, evidence exists, that that's not true. but i'm not passing judgment on that until we get serious evidence. what we know is people in his office ordered this. and this is a life-threatening thing. it was a major inconvenience for thousands of people. so whether he personally ordered that and knew about it or not, i think counts against him pretty seriously. >> because he says, you know, he was outraged when he heard his deputy chief of staff had made that -- had sent that message, go ahead and get some traffic jams going on over there -- i'm paraphrasing, obviously. says he didn't know anything about it, was outraged an

after christie took part in the groundbreaking ceremony for the project last may, the mayor of belleville. so that was the news this week. >> the governor's office has denied anything improper, and this week the head of the recovery effort said, quote, politics has played absolutely no role in disaster recovery. but new jersey's largest paper, the newark star ledger said christie used sandy money as a political slush fund, and says, quote, this was about politics and that is simply wrong. sandy victims everywhere should be furious. joining me now is bob ingle. he is author of "chris christie: the inside story of his rise to power." bob, first, thanks for being here tonight. >> glad to be here, rev. >> how serious are all of these questions about the sandy relief funds? >> i think it's very serious. but one thing you have to keep in mind, you know how federal regulations are, you get a stack about that high. and within that, the locals are given a lot of leeway to do things as they want to do. >> sure. >> now what the administration has said and what you just repeated is there is no politi

life is also observable in christie's personal steering of $6 million in federal sandy relief to belleville. in a fair world that money would have gone to actual victims of hurricane sandy, there's no question that the administration can't meet every sandy need because it doesn't have enough federal aid to do so. season the that all the more reason not to use what emergency we do have as a political slush fund. instead of simply telling sandy hurricane victims that the world is not fair why won't the governor help ensure that it is. the handling of what is supposed to be your single accomplishment as governor, that is not a good thing. the sandy funding issue appears to be the focus of the federal prosecutor's investigation in new jersey. the spreading criticism now of the transparency issue, the transparency with which sandy relief funds are being allocated is part of that scrutiny. in part because of new jersey's repatious history, that issue of transparency of letting the public know how government money is being spent, that's a really potent issue, because corruption and no show jobs an

they say, i read in the paper a senior center in belleville got $6 million. i read in the paper there's $4 million for a luxury high-rise in new brunswick. what do you tell them about the integrity of this money? >> again, it's the same problem. in the case of hgi, we don't have answers. as you know, the media keeps uncovering more and more instances allegedly where money was going, linked in some way to functions that may or may not have been related to the storm. and so, you know, again, if funding was going, you know, to projects or development that was not related to the storm, you know, that's -- that's improper use of the money. now, i mean, i don't have the details on all of these, and the media keeps uncovering them day-to-day, but i mean, if you look at what dawn zimmer said, the mayor of hoboken, the idea of linking this to a development project is totally wrong. and, again, it goes back to this same thing. you know, we fought for this money. it was supposed to be for the storm. it wasn't supposed to be linked to whether or not somebody gets a devel

we're also learning the christie administration gave more sandy funds to the controversial belleville project, the senior center that got built in an area not barely devastated by sandy. lisa ryan, spokeswoman for the department of community affairs said the project changed. joining me, darryl isherwood and staci. berger. first of all, what was your reaction? >> i thought it was interesting they pointed fingers as they've done all along at the federal government. it wasn't the federal government that inappropriately and unfairly rejected people. it wasn't the federal government that didn't put up the right information on spanish language websites. it wasn't the federal government that lost people's applications four or five times. those problems, the things people are really frustrated about and feel they're not getting heard and not getting help, those things are directly the responsibility of the christie administration. >> the federal government who hired two different contractors, one who paid $39 million and another $10 million in settlement. >> $10.5 million. >> for ten months o

you could read that to see a lot of other belleville stories there is a certain innocence. with the revolutionary war veteran going to world history but cannot understand it and that is amassa delano. to answer your question when he read it to he did transform him but not into way sympathetic character at all but a certain kind of emblematic of innocence that cannot see causes in defect to the consequences of their actions. >> host: i feel we're just getting started but we should open for questions please use the microphones. you will be on c-span2. here is your moment to talk to the world. any questions? you have answered everything. >> [inaudible] >> but in the true and historical event. milk will there has been a lot of speculation and why he used that name. >> is there any it -- any evidence? >> no evidence. is undoubtedly more complex but no evidence there is no literary traces. that his father-in-law actually plays a role to enforce the fugitive slave fact that this is politics in the 1850's. it works pro bono when amassa delano writes his memoirs to get out of debt p

week that $6 million of sandy recovery money was spent on a politically connected senior center in bellevillected by the storm than coastal areas of the state. steve kornacki has new reporting on the story. what have you found? >> this is $6 million in sandy funds that we just found out sandy funds paid for this senior citizen complex in bellville. not hit nearly as hard. this relatively speaking was not hit like the coast and hoboken. yet $6 million in sandy money is going to this senior complex. the story we wondered was why did it take until the end of january 2014 for people to realize this was sandy money. there was a law put on the books in new jersey as all that federal money started coming in. it's basically the integrity monitor project of 2014. every project worth more than $5 million is involved is supposed to have an independent integrity monitor assigned to it. that monitor will do auditing and issue quarterly reports that are to be on file with the state legislature. alert immediately if there's any suspicion of any mall feasanasa going on. least see what was going on. there are

why are we only finding out now in late january of 2014, that this massive project in belleville, one you had to do some straining to connect to the sandy recovery effort. why are we only finding out now $6 million of sandy money is being spent on it? we have known about the project. the governor and other local leaders, they made a big to-do about breaking ground last may. it was only this week that we discovered that it is sandy money paying for this project. how have we not known that this whole time? this is where our reporting comes in. this, what i'm holding up right here, is something called the integrity monitor act of 2013. it was passed by the new jersey legislature and signed by chris christie in march of last year. the idea behind it was simple. congress had just approved an enormous aid package for sandy recovery in billions of dollars of federal money were about to start flowing into all sorts of projects. the fight to get congress to approve that money was hard, very hard. maybe you remember the show that christie himself put on when tea party republicans initially bloc