At least $181 million was reserved for Sandy-damaged New York State, New York City and New Jersey to support resiliency against floods and disaster, as part of the National Disaster Resilience Competition. But New York state and city alone took home more than that for having strong applications.
Meanwhile, the Garden State barely met the minimum score to receive any funding, according to U.S. Housing Secretary Julián Castro.
"New Jersey submitted a weaker application on several measures," Secretary Castro said in a conference call with reporters Thursday. "It received a score that was at the cut-off to receive funding."
- New York City won $176,000,000
- New York State won $35,800,000
- New Jersey won $15,000,000
"In 30 days we'll be share with the state of New Jersey all of the specifics of the application," Castro said. "The scores that it received on each of the criteria and how it stacked up to others in the competition."
Castro said New Jersey received feedback several times to help improve its application. One weakness, he said, was the state's failure to tap into non-federal funds. By contrast, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged $108 million of the city's own capital funds to contribute to its project, a series of berms, walls and levees around the bottom of Manhattan.
New Jersey officials expressed shock and anger — either at the state for failing to procure the funding or at HUD for failing to give it.
"The state owes an explanation," U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell wrote in a statement. "Maybe the governor did not want to open the state's coffers, but not leveraging state funding for these projects is foolish and put us at a disadvantage."
A spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kevin Roberts, called the HUD decision, "beyond disappointing."
He added, "With this rejection, the federal government has walked away from a New Jersey project that it deemed worthy of $150 million in funding as recently as June of 2014. HUD’s decision to offer New Jersey such a limited sum is ludicrous given the substantial needs our residents still face."
A total of 13 different states and cities got a total of $1 billion from the competition. Even Minot, North Dakota ($74.3 million), and Springfield, Mass. ($17 million), got larger awards.