BY SUE MORGAN
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY staff Gov. Jon S. Corzine signs the Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Act into law outside Gibbs Hall on Friday as (l-r) state Secretary of Commerce Virginia Bauer, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, Assemblyman Michael Panter, state Sen. Joseph Kyrillos and Eatontown Mayor Gerald Tarantolo look on. The bill creating a new reuse panel for Fort Monmouth in Eatontown was actually born in a missive between a U.S. congressman and the state’s former acting governor.
On Friday afternoon, Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed the final draft of the bill as the author of said letter – U.S. Congressman Rush Holt (D-12) – and other area leaders stood around him on the steps of Gibbs Hall, located on the Eatontown portion of the U.S. Army base.
The governor’s signing of the legislation to create the state-sanctioned Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority served as the coda to the drawn-out and sometimes controversial process of putting together a panel of public and private leaders to guide future reuses of the base’s infrastructure after it shuts down as scheduled in 2011.
Yet Corzine refused to take any credit for helping to craft the law that will establish an official 10-member panel composed of local, county, state, federal and private sector representatives that will be charged with finding new uses for the fort’s buildings and land after the closure.
“I did very little other than sit at a table while other people were hammering out the details,” Corzine said in his remarks prior to affixing his signature.
The Democratic governor praised state legislators from both parties serving in both the state Senate and the Assembly, who put together the final draft from three different versions of the legislation.
Corzine also acknowledged members of the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders and members of the Patriots Alliance, a group of private-sector subcontractors with operations at the fort, for their contributions.
Finally, he thanked mayors Gerald Tarantolo, Peter Maclearie and Lucille Chaump, respectively the leaders of Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, the three host communities for the 1,126-acre base.
“Now we have a common purpose to build and revitalize,” Corzine said. “This is about people and it’s about the future, and it’s very, very bright.”
The governor pledged to work with the new authority as it seeks to create new jobs for fort employees reluctant to relocate to the Aberdeen (Md.) Proving Ground, the site selected by the Pentagon for the transfer of Fort Monmouth’s communications and electronics missions.
“We are going to deliver the goods,” he said.
The approximately 45-minute ceremony under sunny skies featured brief speeches from other elected leaders who played roles, large or small, in coming up with the final bill.
At times, the speakers waxed philosophical, expressing regrets about the demise of Fort Monmouth after 89 years, yet accepting that the new authority would lead the way to the future.
A theme woven through the speeches was to focus on job creation, not just how the base land would be used once the military vacates the premises.
Holt recalled how, soon after the closing of Fort Monmouth was announced, he wrote to Corzine’s predecessor, then-acting Gov. Richard Codey, about setting up the new reuse authority.
In that letter last fall, Holt recommended that a “multi-faceted commission” be formed to work on economics and job creation at Fort Monmouth.
In the same letter, Holt said he persuaded Codey to appoint state Secretary of Commerce Virginia S. Bauer to the Fort Monmouth Reuse Committee, which had formed earlier in August in Eatontown.
Fort Monmouth is really defined not by its property, but by the people who work there and who hope to hold onto their jobs, Holt said.
“If we’re going to have to talk about ‘will be’ rather than ‘might have beens,’ we’re going to have to work together,” Holt said.
“This is not primarily about the land. No, this is primarily about the people,” Holt said. “The use of the land will follow.”
While calling for the authority to seek new ways to re-employ the fort’s “tremendous pool of talent,” Assemblyman Michael J. Panter (D-12), who first sponsored A-2692, the Assembly version of the bill creating the panel, also expressed hope that the base’s open space would be preserved and that the barracks would be reinvented as affordable housing.
State Sen. Joseph M. Kyrillos (R-13), who first initiated S-1049 in Trenton’s upper chamber to put together the authority, acknowledged that competing interests, such as local and state government, had collided at times during the process of the bill’s formation.
The final legislation will represent all of those interests and will ensure that the personnel sitting on the authority and its job description cannot be altered, Kyrillos said.
“This is a very important framework, codified in law that will stand the test of time,” Kyrillos said. “It will serve as a model of other things we can do.”
The Middletown-based legislator also urged other area leaders to think more about regional authorities, such as the one created in the new law, rather than just focusing on localized authority.
“We have too much home rule in New Jersey,” Kyrillos said. “We need to work together in a broad partnership with each other.”
State Sen. Ellen Karcher (D-12), who co-sponsored the state Senate bill with Kyrillos, thanked all of the local mayors and council members who provided input for the bill, even at those times when municipal and state leaders disagreed with one another.
“Sometimes, it might have not been pretty. Sometimes it might have looked like sausage,” said Karcher, of Marlboro. “But in the end, it will be the best thing for all of us.”
Described by Bauer, who officiated the ceremony, as the one official who fought hardest to save Fort Monmouth from shutdown, Tarantolo took a quote from Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
“ ‘Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,’ ” Tarantolo quoted from the retirement speech delivered by the victorious World War II general.
The signing of the legislation begins the process of Fort Monmouth as a metaphor for the “soldier fading away,” Tarantolo said.
“This old soldier will not fade away, but will remain in our history as a tribute to freedom and those who lost their lives,” Tarantolo said.
Because they are now the mayors of the fort’s three host communities, Tarantolo, Maclearie and Chaump will serve on the authority set up by the new law.
Bauer, of Red Bank, will also serve on the authority.
During the drafting of the legislation by area legislators, the three mayors had asked that they be allowed to name a designee to vote in their place should they be absent from an authority meeting.
The final draft of the bill does not allow that provision. However, Bauer, a state official who travels statewide, is permitted to have a designee under the new law.
Although the mayors “didn’t get all of what we wanted,” the final bill signed by Corzine is “one we can live with,” Tarantolo said.
As one of several legislators who unsuccessfully attempted to save Fort Monmouth from shutdown under the federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, U.S. Congressman Frank Pallone (D-6) noted the bittersweet nature of the event.
“I had kind of hoped we’d never have this day,” Pallone said. “So many congressmen continue to fight the battle to keep Fort Monmouth.”
The jobs serving both the military and the private sector will only continue “if the people who work here are allowed to stay here and continue going to work,” Pallone said.
Other attendees included Freeholder Director William Barham and Freeholders Lillian Burry and Anna Little.
Burry has already been appointed by the board to serve as its representative to the authority.
Corzine will soon appoint four representatives to the authority, two of whom will be from the private sector, according to Panter.
The legislation also mandates that one of the gubernatorial appointees will lobby for environmental issues while a second will hold hands-on experience in developing jobs.
Nine of the authority’s 10 members will have voting privileges. The 10th member, a representative of the Defense Department to be named by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, will serve as a non-voting member.
The FMRC, which now includes Tarantolo, Maclearie, Chaump and Bauer, will transition into the new authority after the interim group wraps up its operations next week, Karcher said.
The FMRC’s last meeting is scheduled for this coming Monday at 2 p.m. at Eatontown Borough Hall, 47 Broad St.