Local color

Clinton came to town to raise funds for Rush Holt, and raised $300,000. The Kerry fundraiser collected a total of $7,000. It’s all a matter of Bill’$.

While on the subject of money, Paul Mulshine points out the fundamentals of the McGreevey environmental policy,

The Legislature passed the fast- track bill a mere five days after the environmental crowd got word of it. The governor signed it right away. He left the Highlands Preservation Act unsigned until today.

Why? Money. That’s Tittel’s [Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club] theory, my theory and the theory of just about everyone who knows Trenton. The only thing McGreevey likes more than giving speeches about sprawl is getting campaign cash from the big developers. And those big developers were curiously quiet in their opposition to the Highlands bill. It was mainly the small landowners and builders who were upset.

. . . “While he [McGreevey] was protecting 120,000 acres in the Highlands, the fast-track bill opens up 600,000 to 700,000 acres in the rest of the state for development,” Tittel said.

. . . What’s not in doubt is that the McGreevey re-election effort is in deep trouble. The governor spent June setting up what he thought were the financial and political underpinnings of his run for a second term next year. By the end of July, however, his name had been linked to two major scandals involving the nexus between development and fund- raising.

Surprisingly, a week has gone by without new indictments.