You are right about the funds to rebuild.
I do think he did a good job in the lead up to the storm making sure people new to get out. I think that in the immediate aftermath he did a good job in getting things functional again.
But the funds is a seperate issue. It has been a mess and not just on his part. To me the problem with the rebuilding funds is that it was controlled by too many differant people. I don't think the state itself had much control over most of the money, but you are right they didn't handle what money they did have well. FEMA and insurance companies are all just as bad. FEMA has change rules on the flood zones which has caused problems with rebuilding. The town next to my town had I think 85 to 90% of it's homes damaged and/or destroyed. It is nowhere near restored, and probably never will be, and it isn't all Christie's fault. The took this whole town and made it so that all the houses needed to be raised. Well raising the houses is expensive, and these were cheap small houses. So I think it didn't make sense to a lot of people to spend 40K to raise a 100K house. It isn't like that 40K investment to raise the house is going to increase the value. Plus they raised the rates on flood insurance. I think the other big issue is that a lot of the property damaged in Sandy was rental properties or 2nd homes and this affected how much money people were getting. I think a lot of people were in the situation that they had purchased a 2nd home that someday was going to be their retirement beach home. So while they were still young and working they had these properties as 2nd homes or were renting them out. But then were screwed by the FEMA rules on not covering 2nd properties. I kinda got tired of hearing all these people complain how their shore house got ruined and they got no money to fix it.
People in NJ also have no patience. They expect everything to have been cleaned up and rebuilt in 6 months. Things can only be done so fast. It is a shame that there are still people displaced by the storm, but there is only so much money and work crews to go around. Can't make everybody happy, and in the day and age of the internet where anybody with a complaint can take it to twitter and facebook they can make the situation seem worse than it is. To me where Christie could have actually done something to help was to allow more out of state contractors in to help rebuild. I have heard a few stories where things were delayed because the builders just had too many contracts and that for certain parts of the jobs there were far too few companies available. Specifically mold cleanup and the house raising. To raise the house you needed to be NJ certified and there were/are only a very small number of companies that can do. they didn't suspend that rule to allow some outside companies in temporarily to help. Would have been better for everybody, but didn't happen and that can be blamed on Christie.
So I see why people are pissed. To me it seemed Christie focused his attention on getting roads fixed, businesses back open and that kind of thing and very little on helping people get their lives back up and running. There was not much balance in his approach.
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