Republicans have done a good job of painting the consolidation question into a political one in this state, with conservative writers like Paul Mulshine and Republicans in the state Legislature accusing supporters of trying to eliminate Republican strongholds.
And that is unfortunate, because the question of whether small communities like Jamesburg, Pennington, Hightstown and many up in Bergen County should exist as independent municipalties needs to be explored.
Dennis McNerney, Bergen County executive, is a staunch advocate for exploring consolidation — his state of the county last year focused on his plan to use Bergen as a model county to see if savings could be had from consolidations and shared-services arrangements.
That speech prompted Gov. Jon Corzine to appoint McNerney to the the Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization and Consolidation Commission.
But McNerney, thanks to an archaic and undemocratic state Senate tradition, is unlikely to join the panel anytime soon — if ever.
As Charles Stile reported last week, Gerald Cardinale — a Bergen County Republican — “can use ‘senatorial courtesy’ powers to blackball a gubernatorial nomination from Bergen County,” a tactic he plans to use agaisnt McNerney because he believes the Democrats “will simply rubber stamp ‘preconceived’ recommendations to merge smaller towns with larger ones.”
“I don’t want to take one little chance on somebody with a preconceived notion shoving down taxpayers’ throats that they have to join together and take the risk of paying more than they are paying,” Cardinale said. “That person [McNerney] has a preconceived notion that I consider to be ill-conceived.”
Of course, Cardinale is doing exactly what he fears McNerney will do — acting on a preconceived notion to prevent the open discussion of reforms with which he disagrees. I doubt Cardinale would be opposing McNerney if he was a staunch opponent of consolidation. Nor do I believe the Bergen County senator is calling for a panel made up of people who have given little thought to the issues they will be asked to address.
McNerney deserves a place on the consolidation panel sitting across from some equally staunch opponent of consolidations. That will create the friction needed to light a fire under the issue and get some real answers.
Then again, I really don’t hold out much hope for the merger panel, given that it was defanged during the legislative process, transformed from a commission with real power into an advisory panel that can be ignored — which is, I fear, the preferred approach in both houses of the state Legislature.
In any case, there is something wrong when one member of a 40-member legislative body can scuttle a gubernatorial appointment. There is nothing courteous about that kind of tradition at all.
Hank Kalet 