Despite Gov. Christine Todd Whitman’s (R) campaign to make New Jersey a national model for controlling growth and protecting open space, sprawl is still spreading out of control in the state. New Jersey’s failures demonstrate anew how money and the threat of job losses can undermine public land preservation policy. Merrill Lynch recently pushed through plans to build a giant new office complex on an old cornfield in a relatively rural part of the state, in part by threatening to move 3,500 jobs to Pennsylvania and in part by working with a sympathetic all-Republican five-member town board that gave the company’s plans the go-ahead. Irate locals have since ousted four of the five council members, but it’s too late to stop the project from going forward.
