campaign finance – Page 5

Expanding clean elections

Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts wants to expand the state’s clean election program.

The Camden Democrat called this year’s pilot program a success Tuesday, said the program needed some “refinements” and not a “complete overhaul.”

“The 2007 Clean Elections experience was a vast improvement over the initial 2005 trial of public financing in legislative races,” he said in a press release, in which he outlined three broad changes in the program:

1. Expand the number of Clean Election districts; at a minimum, expand the program to include primary elections in 2009.

2. Strive for parity funding for third-party candidates so they have a more level playing field competing against the major party candidates.

3. Ratchet down spending in designated Clean Election districts as a means of extending public financing to more districts in future elections without requiring exorbitant increases in taxpayer subsidies.

The reforms are the logical next step for a program that helped create a level playing field in the 14th District — even with Common Sense America, an outside group, paying for ads that attacked Democrat Linda Greenstein’s record on taxes.

And leveling the playing field — and expanding opportunities for candidates not tied to the political power structure — is what the program is about.

What was most interesting about Speaker Roberts’ announcement, however, were not the trio of revisions he offered. Those have been on the table for weeks — both Assembly members representing South Brunswick, Bill Baroni, the Hamilton Republican was was just elected to the state Senate, and Linda Greenstein, a Plainsboro Democrat, have said they wanted to see the program expanded and subsidies to candidates reduced.

What is interesting is his interest in potentially expanding the program to local races.

In announcing his principles for improving the program, Roberts also said he is writing a letter to Governor Corzine’s chief of staff, Bradley Abelow, to request that any Clean Elections funds appropriated for the 2007 program remain in the next state budget. Roberts said the funds would be available for potential use in 2008 in the event the program is expanded for local elections – an idea the Speaker plans to examine.

The clean elections program is not perfect and, as the intrusion of Common Sense America shows, special interest cash is unlikely to be removed from the process completely.

But its influence can be reduced by providing candidates with public financing, allowing them to compete electorally without having to rely on corporate or special-interest money.

“The experiences from this year’s three Clean Elections districts prove that the addiction to special interest money can be broken and that voters can become willing participants in meaningful, issue-driven campaigns,” said Roberts.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Questionable financing for stadium

Charles Stile in The Record puts into words the uneasy feeling I felt about the private fundraising effort announced by Gov. Jon Corzine and state Sen. Ray Lesniak to make the Rutgers football stadium expansion a reality.

The governor was right to strip the project of state funding, given the sorry state of New Jersey’s finances. But his basic character flaw — a need to make everyone happy — has resulted in a flawed approach to the funding the project.

There are several problems.

First, as Stile points out, the Corzine/Lesniak plan creates the potential for influence peddling.

Alumni, students and small businesses are likely contributors. But if those donations are classified as confidential, charitable contributions, what’s to stop, say, auto insurance carriers, utilities, casinos and other state-regulated industries from pumping piles of campaign cash toward the cause?

What about developers, facing trouble with wetlands applications at the Department of Environmental Protection? And how about all those contractors barred from making political contributions by the state’s pay-to-play bans? Here’s a chance to give without fear of penalty — or public disclosure.

In essence, the stadium campaign has the potentail to drill massive holes in efforts to break the grip that campaign donors have on the legislative process. Pay-to-play restrictions, public financing, lobbying disclosure, all go out the window if the same people who are prohibited from contributing to the governor or a senate campaign or who are limited can then give for one of Gov. Corzine or Sen. Lesniak’s pet projects.

The second issue I have with the expansion and the fundraising is that the money could be used to bring back some other, smaller sports or to fund academics. The desire on the part of Rutgers — my alma mater — to be a bigtime football program is understandable.

But Rutgers’ mission is not and should not be to field a great football team. Its mission should be to provide a great learning environment for its students and to expand college opportunities for as many New Jersey residents who want to attend and have the grades and test scores to get in. That would mean finding way to reduce tuition for all, or at least subisidize it to a greater degree for most.

The Scarlet Knights’ mediocre 2007 season should be a reminder that football success is fleeting. The school’s reputation as a quality university should not be.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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A question of balance

The Star-Ledger this morning offers what appears on first glance to be a balanced overview of the state’s most recent foray into publicly financed elections. But a closer look reveals a somewhat questionable approach to the story.

I have no direct criticism of the general theme — that opinions are mixed — only with the manner in which the story gets there. Two conservative, anti-clean elections groups are quoted, one from Virginia, in what seems like an effort to find dissenting voices. Without the two groups, there are no dissenting voice.

Just as telling — and odd — NJ Citizen Action, the policy group in the state most voally in favor of clean elections, is ignored.

Far be it from me to tell other reporters how to report — yeah, right — but I would have taken a different tack.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Contractor protections a costly favor

This legislation would seem to be bad news for New Jersey taxpayers. The misleadingly titled “New Jersey Material Price Stabilization Act” is really nothing more than a payoff from an outgoing state legislator to the construction trade industry and could result in cost runups for local construction projects.

In Monroe, for instance, the school board will likely advertise bids for its new high school in February. If this legislation passes, it could leave that project open to price changes and cost hikes for which the board has not planned. The same goes for the firehouse being built in town.

And these are just examples. Charles Stiles in The Record called the legislation the “Politically Connected Contractors Protection Act of 2007”:

The bill would let contractors stick local governments with the cost of unforeseen spikes in construction materials, such as fuel, lumber and macadam. In effect, companies could charge local governments more than the original contract price. Towns could be refunded for drops in prices.

The builders, of course, like the bill.

“A few years ago, there was a dramatic run-up that caused problems, particularly with steel and copper [prices],” Kevin Monaco, lobbyist for electrical contractors, said in an interview Monday. “People talk about tremendous demand in China for goods, and building growth there causes upward pressure on the market. Natural disasters such as [Hurricane] Katrina cause upward pressure.”

Seems logical except that contractors should be monitoring the market and building their projections into their bids. That’s what towns and school districts do when they set their budgets for these projects.

The reality, as Stiles points out, is that the legislation would “saddle towns with higher operating costs.”

Some towns, they argue, will have to assign staff just to validate contractor claims of higher materials costs. Smaller towns will be forced to farm out the work to consulting engineers. Officials also worry that unscrupulous contractors will artificially lower their bids to get the work, knowing that there is a good chance they can charge towns for construction costs at a later date.

And local officials argue that the borrowing costs for projects will rise. Towns will be forced to approve large bond issues for unexpected cost fluctuations — another cost that could put pressure on local tax rates.

The bill would minimize the risk for contractors, and add to the work and possibly costs to taxpayers, says L. Mason Neely, a longtime fiscal watchdog for the New Jersey League of Municipalities.

“This bill is not going to help the general public,” he said.

So why pass something like this? Stiles offers one possible answer:

The Building Contractors Association of New Jersey, one of the bill’s supporters, contributed $180,000, most of it to Democratic candidates, according to Election Law Enforcement Commission records. The Mechanical Contractors Association, another supporter of the bill, donated $114,000 during the election cycle, records show.

The powerful AFL-CIO of New Jersey, the umbrella group that boasts 1 million members and a de facto auxiliary of the state Democratic Party over the past decade, also supports the bill. Giving contractors a chance to recover their losses for materials reduces the risk of layoffs.

If ever a piece of legislation demonstrated the need for campaign finance reform, this is one.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.