(The Center Square) – New Jersey Republicans are criticizing the state’s use of taxpayer dollars to construct a French-themed art museum, accusing the Murphy administration of wasteful spending and a lack of transparency.
In a letter to Gov. Phil Murphy, Sen. Michael Testa Jr., R-Cape May, blasted the estimated $200 million Pompidou X museum project in Jersey City as a “boondoggle” and called for a performance audit and more financial oversight “to protect against excess, waste, and potentially worse.”
The request follows a GOP review of the project, outlined in a memo from New Jersey Senate Republican Caucus Budget Director Tom Neff, who said the project has become a “circus of excess and waste” of taxpayer dollars fueled by the state’s pay-to-play laws.
The GOP’s review found more than $33 million in taxpayer dollars will be paid to the Centre Pompidou French Arts Museum in Paris – $11 million of which is for the right to use the Pompidou name on the museum for five years.
Meanwhile, more than 30 no-bid consultants will receive an estimated $40 million for the project’s “extravagant” soft costs, Neff said, including a food consultant, a “vertical transportation” consultant, a French legal consultant, and consultants for lighting, sound and signage.
Neff wrote that the Murphy administration is “either unaware or disinterested in the level of excess and waste, and has insisted on no cost constraints.”
Republicans also blame the state’s pay-to-play laws for allowing no bidding vendors to make campaign contributions to the governor, lawmakers, and other officeholders backing the project.
“Tens of millions of dollars have already been spent or incurred on no-bid consultant and professional fees,” Neff wrote in the memo. “Some of it is indirectly washing back into campaign coffers and entities that otherwise promote officeholders supporting the project.”
So far the project has received about $58 million in public funds, the memo pointed out, including $10 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds.
“All of these funds were appropriated, and or awarded without meaningful applications, or substantive oversight, and there is no transparency or accountability with respect to the same,” he wrote.
Jersey City officials have touted the museum project as key to revitalization efforts for the city’s long-neglected downtown. Pompidou X would be a satellite of Centre Pompidou, Paris’ famed museum of modern art, and would exhibit art from the Pompidou’s collection, including artists such as Frida Kahlo, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp, officials say.
But Testa said the museum project is siphoning away tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money with little to no oversight of the spending.
“It’s not clear why this extremely expensive project is a priority for the Murphy administration, but the least the governor can do is try to control costs that appear to be ballooning,” he said.
