MORRISTOWN — Over and over, Assemblyman Anthony Bucco has resorted to outright lies to distort his catastrophic environmental record and mislead the public on Lake Hopatcong.

Yesterday, however, he took his anti-fact campaign to the next level with a new one: that he “authorized an expanded street sweeping and storm drain inspection and cleaning project on county roads around Lake Hopatcong.”

Unfortunately for many of his constituents, Anthony Bucco is a member of the State Assembly. Unfortunately for Anthony Bucco, that means he can’t “authorize” county employees to do anything. Since it seems to better suit him, maybe Assemblyman Bucco should be running for freeholder instead…

And this is far from the first time he’s played fast and loose with the truth.

Just a few days ago he again falsely claimed credit for someone else’s decision: that of the Department of Environmental Protection to remove signage about the lake closure from highways in the area. In the same breath he irresponsibly called into question the science behind the lake’s closure, saying that it “seemed to me there were people on the water and on the lake… It’s hard for them to say this is serious.”

Earlier this month he repeatedly touted his funding package of $500,000 for the Lake Hopatcong Commission as a major environmental victory. What he conveniently left out was that the commission allocates only $150,000 of their budget to address algae growth on the lake, and that they estimate an effective lake cleanup project would cost more than $4 million. It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that those numbers don’t add up.

The truth is, Anthony Bucco ignored warnings for ten years and took orders from his political boss Chris Christie to tear up environmental protections and leave Lake Hopatcong vulnerable at every turn. Now that he’s gotten us into this mess, he’s trying to shift the blame and spin the truth to get himself out of it.

“This is exactly why people call him ‘Bare Minimum Bucco.’ He’s good enough for a photo-op and a press release, but not much else,” said Daniel Fleiss, Bhimani and Draeger Campaign Manager. “It’s not enough that Anthony Bucco has barely raised a finger to help the residents around Lake Hopatcong, now he’s lying about it too.”

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