Christina Genovese Renna

Christina Genovese Renna, Gov. Chris Christie's former director of intergovernmental affairs, testifies in May at the Statehouse before the legislative panel investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closings. (Tony Kurdzuk | The Star-Ledger)

TRENTON — An aide to Gov. Chris Christie traded emails last year about a controversial gas pipeline through the Pinelands region with her husband, who is a top executive at the company behind the project, records obtained by NJ Advance Media show.

The messages, including one about how the Pinelands Commission members may vote on the project, were sent the same day a member who opposed the pipeline said he was told the State Ethics Commission had ordered him to recuse himself.

The governor's office released the records Oct. 2 in response to an order by state Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson, who ruled they were wrongly denied under an Open Public Records Act request filed in February. The request was made by The Star-Ledger.

In its response, the governor’s office said the records were related to an ongoing investigation pertaining, at least in some way, to the pipeline. But it declined to identify the nature or target of the investigation, or the agency conducting it.

The emails were exchanged Dec. 12, 2013, between the aide, Christina Genovese Renna, on her governor's office account, and Michael Renna, who is president and chief operating officer of South Jersey Industries, the parent company of South Jersey Gas, which wanted to build the pipeline in the environmentally sensitive area.

They discussed a letter sent to the Pinelands Commission the same day by four former governors — Brendan T. Byrne, Tom Kean, Christie Whitman and Jim Florio — who expressed opposition to the project and urged commissioners to reject it.

“Is this a shot across the bow?” Michael Renna wrote. “Sure seems like it’s personal for (former Gov. Tom Kean) and (former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman)…”

Three minutes later, Genovese Renna responded, “There is little love lost between Whitman and Christie. (Tom Kean) and the Gov have their own set of issues.”

“It could be a shot from him, but par for the course from her,” she wrote. “He’ll do what he wants to do either way —I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.”

Her husband responded 16 minutes later: “Yeah- but interesting nonetheless.”

“This is fast coming to a head and rumored to be a very, very close vote,” Michael Renna wrote. “Could very well land 8-7 one way or the other. Curious as to why the (former governors) would choose a letter, not on any kind of letterhead, to pick a fight with (Gov. Chris Christie)? Why a letter? Why wouldn’t Byrne and Florio stand behind a microphone and speak out?”

He added, “Plus- no Corzine, McGreevy (sic), Codey or Donnie D.”

Six days before the emails, one of the Pinelands commissioners, Edward Lloyd, said he was told to recuse himself by two lawyers with the state Attorney General’s Office because he is a co-founder and co-director of the Eastern Environmental Law Clinic, which had written a letter asking that the pipeline’s review be extended.

Lloyd said he objected to the Christie administration’s request and planned to push ahead with his ‘no’ vote. But on the same day as the Renna e-mail exchange, he said, he received a call from the Pinelands ethics liaison, Stacey Roth, who told him that the State Ethics Commission had ordered him to recuse himself.

The head of the commission at the time, Peter Tober, later told the New York Times that the commission had made no such order. In April, after the vote and Lloyd's recusal, the commission found he was right to have stayed out of the matter.

Environmentalists seized on the email exchange as further evidence of a conflict of interest within the governor's office, which pushed hard in favor of the 22-mile pipeline between Maurice River Township and Beesleys Point. The project was ultimately rejected after a deadlocked 7-7 vote by the commission Jan. 10.

“There was coordination and direct communication, and you have to imagine that if they’re emailing, they certainly were talking as well. It’s a direct conflict of interest,” said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey, an advocacy group. “This is high hypocrisy, to claim that a commissioner needed to recuse himself because of conflicts of interest, and then literally engaging in this in such a direct way.”

Genovese Renna, who was Christie’s director of intergovernmental affairs, resigned Jan. 31 and said in a statement she had been considering resigning since the November election and it was a "natural time” to transition into the private sector.

A spokesman for the governor’s office, Kevin Roberts, said Genovese Renna “had no policy-making role whatsoever in the administration during her time here.”

“Which just goes to show you what straws critics will grasp at to fuel their opposition to a project that represents a great public interest as detailed in the state and national reviews detailed above,” Roberts said.

He said the governor’s support for the pipeline is “connected exclusively with the long-term energy demands of New Jersey” and noted it has bi-partisan support and has been approved by state regulators as well as three federal agencies.

Roberts added that Christie “has both great respect for and a great working relationship with former Governors Whitman and Kean.”

An attorney for Genovese Renna, Henry Klingeman, said, “There was never a conflict of interest between Christina Renna’s position in the governor’s office and her husband’s work at South Jersey Industries.”

“She had no involvement in the deliberations over the Pinelands pipeline in the governor’s office and of course the governor was on record supporting the pipeline to begin with,” Klingeman said. “The emails themselves corroborate that there was neither any conflict of interest nor any involvement by Christina Renna in the official deliberations inside the governor’s office.”

He added that Genovese Renna was unaware of the situation regarding Lloyd’s recusal from the vote and that “it sounds like a coincidence.”

A spokesman for South Jersey Industries, Daniel Lockwood, said Michael Renna had not yet been promoted to his current position at the time of these emails and he “had no direct involvement with South Jersey Gas or its pipeline project.”

Michael Renna had been a senior vice president of the parent company. He was promoted Jan. 24, about a week before his wife resigned from the governor's office.

“Let’s note that this innocuous email exchange is the only such conversation that Mike and his wife had on the subject,” Lockwood said. “In addition, as can clearly be seen, it makes absolutely no requests for anyone in the governor’s office to take any action related to South Jersey Gas’ BL England and system reliability project.”

As part of its records request, The Star-Ledger sought “communications…sent or received by Christina Genovese Renna, from Jan. 1, 2013 to Feb. 1, 2014, regarding the South Jersey Gas Pipeline project proposed for the Pinelands region.”

On March 17, Andrew McNally, assistant counsel to the governor’s office, denied the request, stating the records, “related to an investigation in progress” and were exempt from disclosure. He did not disclose any information about the investigation.

In response, The Star-Ledger sued April 29 in state court in Mercer County, arguing the records were public when they were created and could not be shielded from disclosure because they were later incorporated into an unidentified investigation.

After privately reviewing the responsive records, Jacobson partially agreed with the newspaper and granted access to nine of the 16 documents.

“In light of the fact that the records themselves do not convey anything about an investigation, the Office of the Governor cannot cloak and otherwise public document in secrecy under the ongoing investigation privilege,” the judge wrote.

She denied access to seven documents, stating that they were protected by the Open Public Records Act exemption covering advisory, consultative or deliberative materials. The governor’s office did not cite the exemption in its original denial of the records request, but subsequently raised it in a brief filed with the court.

The newspaper was unable to directly refute the claim because the judge allowed the governor’s office to file a brief in secret to protect the unidentified investigation.

Jacobson said in her ruling that the withheld records are emails, dated Nov. 25, 2013, between “government officials from the Board of Public Utilities and the governor’s office considering the status of the pipeline project and discussing various alternatives for the processing of the application.”

“While the court agrees that the newspaper has a journalistic interest in the proposed South Jersey pipeline,” Jacobson said, “The Star-Ledger’s interest is not strong enough to overcome the compelling interest of the Office of the Governor in keeping its internal decision-making deliberations confidential.”

As part of the ruling, Jacobson ordered the governor’s office to pay the newspaper’s attorneys fees.

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: NJ Advance Media is affiliated with The Star-Ledger and NJ.com. At the time of the OPRA request, reporters in the organization's Statehouse bureau, including Christopher Baxter, worked for The Star-Ledger. Those reporters are now NJ Advance Media employees.

Christopher Baxter may be reached at cbaxter@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @cbaxter1. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.