A story in today’s Record of Hackensack explores the kind of conflicts that state legislators who also hold local or county offices face, placing their divided loyalties within the context of the state budget.
New Jersey legislators who hold other elected offices face a dilemma as they consider Governor Corzine’s budget: Vote to do what is best for the state as a whole or what best serves their community.
At issue in the proposed budget, of course, is a series of cuts that could have huge consequences at the local level — in particular, a reduction in aid to municipalities. State Sen. Paul Sarlo, for instance, is both the mayor of Wood-Ridge — which is losing $393,602 in aid — and the vice chairman of the Senate Budget Committee; Sen. Steven Sweeney is a Gloucester County Freeholder and member of the Budget Committee; and Assemblyman Gary Schaer, vice chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, is council president in Passaic — a city slated to lose about $1 million in aid. What concerns will they bring to the discussion and how will they weight the various arguments? Will aid to their communities be saved at all costs — and what would those costs be?
All three gave an indication of the lens through which they plan to view the issue:
“We are able to demonstrate what the unintended consequences of this cut would mean,” Sarlo said. “It’s not just my district, it affects the entire state.”
Does that mean the aid will be saved? The governor already is signalling a change of heart, though he has been adamant about keeping spending at last year’s level and not increasing it. If aid is increased, what gets cut instead?
Already, the governor has proposed shutting some state parks, eliminating the state Department of Agriculture and cutting aid to hospitals and colleges, so reinstating the aid without increasing spending will be difficult, especially when all of the other constituencies are pushing to reverse their own cuts. And that does not take into account the desire among some — antipoverty groups, for instance — for new programs.
Legislators who hold multiple offices may argue that they are in the best position to understand the needs of their dual constituencies, but that argument fails when you consider that many legislators, such as Linda Greenstein, Joseph Vitale, Kevin O’Toole and Peter Biondi, served at the local level, giving them a pretty good handle on how state actions affect local government.
The reality is that dual office-holding is a conflict of interest, creating dual loyalties and an expanded power base that could result in Sharpe James-style corruption.
“When all is said and done, the reason you don’t have dual office-holding is it’s a basic conflict of interest,” said Ingrid Reed, director of the New Jersey Project at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics.
That inherent conflict is often overlooked because the possibility of pension-padding and double-dipping gets more attention, Reed said. Yet she believes the conflict-of-interest issue is the strongest argument against the practice, and when legislators have to consider how an issue will affect their different constituencies they have already crossed a line.
“Dual office-holding is about that clarity of who do you represent,” Reed said. “It’s very difficult to be fair and not have a conflict.”
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Hank Kalet 