New Jersey’s economic development commission is appealing a recent court decision granting Holtec International a multi-million dollar state tax break, according to a recent court filing.
According to a Jan. 20 appeal notice, viewed Wednesday by Exchange Monitor, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) is challenging the Mercer County Superior Court’s Dec. 30 ruling ordering the commission to give Holtec a roughly $26 million payment from 2018. That’s part of a roughly $260 million tax incentive the state granted the company in 2014.
In the appeal, NJEDA said that the court erred when it agreed with Holtec’s assertion that the agency’s application for the tax credit contained “ambiguous” wording that resulted in the company omitting from its application that it was briefly barred from doing business with the Tennessee Valley Authority in 2010.
NJDEA’s 2014 application “did not ask whether the applicant had been subject to debarment in the past five years,” Holtec’s attorney Michael O’Mullan said in a November hearing of the Superior Court. “It did not ask as others had asked Holtec, ‘At any time during the past five years has your company been debarred, suspended, or proposed for debarment?’”
Holtec maintained that if NJEDA had asked such a question, the company would have disclosed the incident with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
NJEDA, meanwhile, said it withheld Holtec’s 2018 payout while it evaluated whether the company made “false statements” to the commission on its initial application to receive the award.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the New Jersey Superior Court had yet to rule on the appeal.
Spokespersons for the NJEDA and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) declined to comment for this story.
Holtec provides decommissioning and site management services for nuclear plant operators.
Holtec Decommissioning International (HDI), the company’s joint venture with SNC-Lavalin, is currently dismantling several plants across the country, including at Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Forked River, N.J. Holtec has also applied with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build one of the country’s first consolidated interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel in New Mexico.
