New Jersey Gov represented as shady salesman "hocking the highways"

The Asbury Park Press, the leading newspaper on the Jersey shore has taken discussion of Governor Jon Corzine's protracted policymaking on the future of the state's tollroads to a new level of passion by portraying him on their frontpage as a sleazy salesman under the headline "Hocking the Highways". (see nearby) There was a subhead "Broken promises of New Jersey's toll roads".

The broken promises part was tendentious citing of supposed promises back in 1952 when the Garden State Parkway was starting construction that it would go toll free by 1988 when the original bonds were due to be paid off. We've seen statements that the Parkway was never intended to go toll-free.

In any case it is rather naive to think that present day politicians are going to feel bound by what another generation of politicians promised back in the 1950s. What right do politicians have to make promises about what their successors, decades later, will do about tolls or road financing?

The great bulk of the materials in the Asbury Park Press articles, however was fair. It was sensible, balanced reporting – discussion of the issues involved in either refinancing the state's tollroads, or putting them out to private concession with a longterm lease. How much might tolls go up?

The rather extreme caricature produced a protest from the Governor's chief of staff who penned an unusual open letter:

"(U)sing (photo editing software) to manipulate the Governor - any governor - into a sinister character is not what we would expect from a responsible media organization.

"As we enter the important debate on how best to restructure New Jersey’s finances to better serve the public, the free press must do so without their own opinion or agenda. Images that are nothing more than editorial cartoons morphed into photographs are fine – for the editorial page.

"But placement of such images on the front page of the Sunday edition demonstrates a blatant disregard for objective reporting. For that, I believe you owe your readers an apology and a renewed commitment to presenting the facts in an unbiased, straightforward manner rather than telling them what they should think."

COMMENT: Gov Corzine's handling of this issue is painfully slow, indecisive and rather timid. The way the thing drags on and on is inept politics. But the "Hocking the highways" imagery is off target. There is nothing sleazy, sinister or shady in the Governor's behavior.

He isn't even hocking the highways. If only he were...

We suspect that after three years of passionate argument and rampant speculation the whole NJ tollroads affair is going to turn out a huge anti-climax with nothing much of substance changing apart from some debt being moved off the state's books onto the state tollroads' accounts, some extra tollroads debt, higher tolls, and some new corporate names. Work for the lawyers, the stationers and graphic designers.

Next time the Asbury Park Press turns to caricature they would get it better with the governor pictured as a big talking, absent-minded professor. He'd be lost in a messy office among heaps of unfinished studies.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-12-02