Tag: Legislature

Two is one too many

The Record of Hackensack attempts to keep an important issue on the table — the double-dipping of elected officials.

By double-dipping, I mean the practice of holding an elected office and an appointed one. There are dozens of elected officials around the state that engage in the practice, including Monroe Mayor Richard Pucci who also serves as executive director of the Middlesex County Improvement Authority.

In the state Legislature, there are numerous attorneys who represent local boards — or go before local boards for developers, and a handful with public jobs like state Sen. Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, who serves as the deputy chief of staff to the Essex County executive, state Sen. Nicholas Sacco, D-Bergen, who is assistant superintendent for the North Bergen Board of Education, and Assemblyman Ronald Dancer, R-Ocean, who is an interviewer in the Ocean County adjuster’s office.

As the Record points out, in writing about a bill sponsored by state Sen. Bill Baroni, R-Mercer,
The potential conflicts of interest when a state senator or Assembly member is also a municipal engineer or attorney for one of the towns in the district are obvious to Baroni. They are also obvious to us. Such conflicts raise questions about favoritism, effectiveness and accountability. They are often a way to consolidate power and influence.

Why do some legislators understand that and some don’t?

The answer, of course, is not that some don’t understand, but that most do understand and benefit.

The editorial cites a report — “How Much Is Enough?” issued last year by New Jersey Policy Perspective — that “describes the problems created by double dipping and the state’s incestuous political culture.”

According to the report, ” … the prime motive in seeking and holding public office is to control the distribution of favors and rewards. Among the most prized favors and rewards, of course, are jobs.” It becomes accepted and even desirable to hold multiple government jobs, and some legislators see nothing wrong with it.

Not everyone sees it that way. The report cites a poll last year that found that more than three-quarters of New Jersey voters said state lawmakers should not be allowed to have another government job of any kind, elected or appointed.

But some lawmakers have trouble hearing that message. They know the public is sick and tired of corruption and wants reform. But giving up local power and influence — and more than one public paycheck — is hard.

Hard, perhaps, but necessary. One public job should be enough.

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Built-in conflicts

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.”

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

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Workers are the winners

There has been much sturm and drang over the state’s paid family leave proposal, including criticism from one of the state Senate’s more liberal members and a full-out assault by the state Chamber of Commerce.

And yet, the legislation has now passed both houses of the Legislature and is on to the governor, who has stated publicly that he plans to sign it into law.

Given the opposition from the business community and the way in which campaign cash tends to trump belief in the Legislature, the

The plan is pretty simple, according to The Star-Ledger:

The paid family leave act (A873) would allow workers to apply for up to six weeks off to care for a newborn or newly adopted child, or a sick parent, spouse or child, and collect up to two-thirds of their pay, up to a maximum of $524 a week. The benefit would be funded by an average worker contribution of about $33 a year, levied through a mandatory employee payroll tax.

Basically, it is similar to unemployment or disability insurance, money that workers will pay into a fund that will assist them in crisis situations. The state federal governments already grant family and medical leave. But that leave is unpaid and too often forces workers to choose between a paycheck and their families.

Consider the son or daughter who must take care of an ailing parent, or the parent dealing with an ailing child. As things stand, they could take the time without pay; under the new legislation, they would get some compensation — and, despite the business community’s complaints, it should do businesses little harm.

The biggest problem with the bill is that it had been revised to address the concerns of small businesses — while the bill would require companies with more than 50 employees to hold a position for a worker on leave, it offers no protection for workers at smaller companies — which is why Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Trenton) opposed it.

“This bill is discriminatory and unfair,” said Sen. Shirley K. Turner, D-Mercer. “Those individuals working for small employers are not given the same rights as everyone else, although they have to pay. … This is taxation without participation.”

I think the bill is a good start, but Turner’s criticisms must be addressed. Every worker must be given protection — especially if they are being required to pay into the new system.

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

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Rushing to judgmentresults in rushed judgments

The Asbury Park Press today dresses down the state Legislature for its painfully undemocratic and incredibly inefficient practice of loading legislation into the last two months of its two-year session — the so-called lame-duck period between the legislative elections and the swearing in of newly elected legislators.

On the final day of the lame-duck legislative session last week, 89 bills were pushed through — about one-fourth the total number of bills approved by lawmakers in 2006-07. On that final day, 177 bills were up for consideration. Imagine the amount of caffeine flowing through the Statehouse veins that day. Imagine the quality of the decision-making.

Due deliberation was in short supply. Many of the bills were approved with little chance for public review or debate. Some of the most controversial weren’t introduced until days before the final voting session. How could the Legislature give a full vetting to any of them? It couldn’t and it didn’t.

The reason this is done, as the Press points out, is “to get legislation passed that might not fly if it were subject to closer examination by lawmakers and the public” — i.e., at a time when legislators might have to explain their actions to voters.

The lame-duck session does little to disabuse the public of the notion that New Jersey government is dysfunctional. The array of bills that get considered during this marathon session is mind boggling in its scope.

Some — like the bill repealing the death penalty — are positive changes. Others — like legislation allowing for price adjustments in public contracts ($), which thankfully failed to win approval — do little to advance the public interest.

On others — like the new state school funding formula, which was obviously delayed until December to avoid the electoral ramifications and then rushed through so that it could take effect in 2008 — the jury is still out.

Reform is needed. Rules limiting the number of bills that can be considered should be put in place and public officials need to commit themselves to ensuring that each piece of legislation gets the hearing it deserves. As the Press points out:

Trust in New Jersey government is nonexistent. It won’t be restored if citizens don’t have faith that decisions are made openly, with full debate and with their best interests in mind.

Process counts. Rushed decisions mean bad decisions. The Legislature is living proof.

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

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.