Only three weeks before, Luthman had sounded alarms about his own agency's trash-to-steam plant, or incinerator, in a letter to 14 investors that included Wall Street financial giants Merrill Lynch, Prudential Securities, and Solomon-Smith-Barney.
The Pollution Control Financing Authority of Camden County (PCFACC) would default on its final bond payment of $25 million on Dec. 1 unless the state came through with millions of dollars in aid, wrote Luthman, the deputy executive director.
After years of financial problems, Luthman's agency was looking to build a more-profitable future, even sending him on a $3,000 trip to Germany last year to research composting technology that had not yet been tried in the United States.
But what's become increasingly clear is that the authority that handles trash for all but one of the county's 37 towns can never move forward as long as it is mired in debt it can't repay.
The authority has sent similar letters to investors for a decade, but New Jersey always came through with bailout money - $152 million in all since 1999.
This year, the cash-strapped state plans to deny the subsidy.
Only days before the payment is due, state and local officials still have not agreed on how to save the agency from a default, which would be a rarity in the municipal bond market. PCFACC officials, accused of inaction by the state, have been summoned to a meeting in Trenton on Tuesday morning to discuss a financial plan.
State officials have pressed for the authority to restructure the debt, but the PCFACC says it can't because of its credit ratings, which are junk.
"Their inaction is beyond unacceptable," wrote Thomas Neff, who heads the Local Government Services division of the Department of Community Affairs, in a Nov. 11 e-mail to The Inquirer.
The incinerator is owned by a subsidiary of the Foster Wheeler company, but the PCFACC owns the land on which the plant operates.
