The Battle for New Jersey History: Part 2

So, to recap, in the previous post about The Battle for New Jersey History, we left off with my letter to Governor Chris Christie, urging him to rethink his decision to cut much-needed aid to sites like the Old Trenton Barracks and USS New Jersey from the state budget.

After sending the letter to Governor Christie, I forwarded a copy to a number of his friends and colleagues as well as many other people who I thought could influence the outcome. Perhaps as many as 200 people received an electronic version of the letter either from me or from other concerned citizens. In the meantime, we awaited the governor's response for several weeks. In sending the letter to my state legislators, I received immediate acknowledgement that they had received my correspondence. I therefore began to think that Governor Christie hadn't gotten it. So I sent it a second time. Eventually, the budgetary deadline passed, and I received word from Ms. Litvack that Governor Christie had used his line-item veto power to eliminate funding for the historic sites for which we had fought. It seemed that the governor didn't realize that there were people out there who deeply cared about New Jersey's historical legacy and weren't about to go down without a fight. We needed a megaphone.

The ideal megaphone was the largest newspaper in the state, The Star Ledger (circulation: 500,000). It took about a weekend to skinny down the gist of my original letter to the governor to conform with the Star Ledger's word limit for opinion pieces. It was deeply gratifying when, on Wednesday, July 6^th, my letter to the editor was published and given its own highlighted column in the Opinion section!

My Letter to the Editor in the Star Ledger.
Note the highlight they put around it!

A little while later, I received a reply from the governor. In his letter, he agreed that the Battleship New Jersey and the Old Trenton Barracks “are noteworthy and deserving of support and appreciation by our state's residents.” However, he acknowledged that he had removed their line-item appropriations because he believed that they would “inhibit the fair and competitive grant process we worked to provide the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.” This left me a bit confused. Was the funding there or not? I asked Ms. Litvack to review the unintelligible political speak, and to please translate. Upon reviewing Governor Christie's response, she explained that by moving these essential sites into this other funding pool, there would be less money to go around across an entire range of important organizations (no win there).

While Ms. Litvack and I were quite concerned about what appeared to be Governor Christie's final decision, it seems that our efforts have ultimately paid off, as the state government transferred the Old Trenton Barracks, USS New Jersey, and Morven out of state jurisdiction and into the Department of Environmental Protection, where they will be safeguarded and given funding to keep up with their operational needs. While we don't know if it was the pressure from a few concerned citizens, the influence of his friends and colleagues, or challenging his decision in front of 500,000 voters that changed Governor Christie's mind, I nevertheless claim absolute victory on behalf of New Jersey History as we head off to meet our next objective!

I mean really, not many people have gotten the chance to claim total victory since the days of the Battle of Trenton!