You hate to have to do something like this, but the people we elect apparently can’t be trusted to make sure that pension contributions are actually used for pension payments. So we’ll just have to take their ability to run the three-card monte away from them.
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The call last week by Assembly members Bill Baroni and Alex DeCroce for a special legislative session to develop and approve anti-corruption legislation should be heeded. If not with a special session, then with real, bipartisan ethical reform.
While some are dismissing it as nothing more than politics — and make no mistake, there is a whole lot of politics involved here — the fact is that the corruption they are pointing to exists and it is incumbent upon legislators to rein it in.
Last week, state Sen. Wayne Bryant, a Camden County Democat, became the latest in a long line of high-profile state officials, along with a bevy of lower-level officials (housing officials in Passaic County, zoning officials in Monmouth County), to face indictment. Like former state Sen. President John Lynch — the Middlesex County Democratic power broker who pleaded guilty last year to federal corruption charges — Sen. Bryant is accused of abusing his office. In his case, he’s been accused of trading a no-show job with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in exchange for his steering of grant money to the school.
The problem is greater than Sen. Bryant or former Sen. Lynch — far greater, of course, than any individual politician. It is systemic, a product of a state tradition that allows New Jersey’s elected officials to hold more than one public job, creating a nexus of influence that encourages, in the words of Alfred Doblin, editorial page editor of The Record of Hackesnack, the “regular exchange of ‘Christmas’ presents among legislators, local elected officials and organizations with financial ties to state and local governments.”
Doblin, in a column on Monday, blames the double-dipper — the elected official who holds multiple, interwined public jobs — but also the political status quo, which has done very little to change the system. And this goes for both political parties — Bryant, Lynch, James Treffinger and all the others have been getting away with things for too long.
Wayne Bryant was in the Legislature for a long time. Are voters supposed to believe that no other legislators or their staffs had an inkling of what was going on? That’s as improbable as being told that no one in Trenton knew former Gov. Jim McGreevey was gay. Either the folks in Trenton are dim or we are.
Hence, the call for reforms by the Republicans.
“We are at a critical mass of corruption in New Jersey,” Assemblyman Baroni said last week. And it is difficult to argue. Voters believe that New Jersey politicians are on the take — and too many are.
Are the Republicans manipulating the issue? Of course. Did the Democrats do the same in Congress with the Abramoff scandal, and are they doing the same thing now with the firing of the U.S. attorneys? Yes. But that does not mean that scandals were not real.
Framing the issue as a purely political question obscures that corruption has become a fact of life in New Jersey for both sides and that the Democrats, by virtue of their status as the majority party, have a responsibility to do something aobut it.
The package of bills being pushed by the GOP has some interesting and useful suggestions — an end to double-dipping and pay-to-play reforms — and deserves a hearing.
The governor already has signed legislation sponsored by Assembly Democrat John Adler that imposes tough sanctions on lawmakers who violate ethical standards. But the Democrxatic majority has been slow to enact a real ban on dual-office holding and double-dipping and to create tougher pay-to-play restrictions and clamp down on contractors and developers. They have an opportunity now to fix a broken system — to expand the clean elections program, give the state comptroller some real powers and create a corruption czar in the AG’s office among them.
There are a lot of potential reforms that could alter the climate here. We shouldn’t let politics get in the way.
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Today’s column by Alfred P. Doblin, editorial page editor of The Record, pretty much sums up the corruption problem in New Jersey. It’s not just that some politicans may be on the take, but that the system has been structured to allow legislators to amass multiple jobs, creating multiple pensions, expanding their power and influence.
It’s an ugly thing that needs to be fixed.
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A second Dispatches (two for the price of one!) is up, this one from today’s Cranbury Press. It is on the weak property tax relief offered instead of reform.
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Leave it to a bunch of politicians to find a way to water down a reform so that it doesn’t apply to them, only to those who will eventually replace them. That’s what has happened to a proposed ban on dual office-holding, which will grandfather in current members of the state Legislature and only apply to new members or those who seek a different office (an Assembly member running for Senate, for instance).
The grandfather clause may have been necessary to garner enough votes (doubtful, but for the sake of argument we’ll allow this to go uncontested), but it certainly was not the right way to go about cleaning up government.
State Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) wants to change that. Kean, who lost a bruising U.S. Senate race to Robert Menendez, told the Jersey City Reporter that dual office-holding is an “‘absolute conflict of obligations’ that gives certain politicians too much power.”
There are 18 members of the state Legislature who currently hold another elected position — or 15 percent. This does not include the handful of others who serve as school superintendents and in other similar positions. This raises questions about whom they serve first — exactly the point that Kean is trying to make.
David Rebovich, managing director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics, describes Kean’s arguments this eay on PoliticsNJ:
Kean is interested in consistency, claiming that if the practice is wrong as most legislators apparently believe — after all, they do want to ban it for others — then there is no justification for grandfathering people in except political expediency and favoritism.
Beyond consistency, Kean makes several other arguments for getting rid of the practice. He believes dual office-holding leads to higher property taxes. This is a tricky point. Local officials who are also legislators will fight for more state aid for their communities and school districts. But presumably they will also tolerate more bureaucracy and public employees at the local level because they are part of the establishment there. Kean also notes that dual office-holding concentrates political power among fewer politicians which gives them a large power base from which they can thwart discussions for reform and changes in various policies.
In addition, Kean claims that holding a local and a state office creates conflicts of interest. For example, state legislators may not support policies that are good for the entire state, but not for the local political establishment, because such support may jeopardize reelection to their local office. As such, the system of checks and balances between levels of government can be compromised by dual office-holders. Will mayors who are also legislators support plans for municipal consolidation or merger
that may save taxpayers some money but cost themselves and their political allies their local government posts? Will they empower a state comptroller or other officials to flesh out wasteful and perhaps illegal spending in municipal governments or schools, or will they try to protect these jurisdictions from such scrutiny?On these terms, the advocacy role played by legislators who are also local officials may undermine the ability of state government to exercise its constitutional authority over substate jurisdictions and to root out inefficient and ineffective policies and programs. Lastly, Kean complains that dual office-holding limits the number of people who can serve in government and its representative quality by making it harder for women and minorities too gain office. More people and different types of people in government typically mean more views expressed and perhaps a livelier, more productive dialogue about policy issues.
I’ve been rather critical of young Kean, especially for the manner in which he attacked Menendez during the campaign, helping to drag an already ugly race deeper into the gutter. But his proposal — that dual office-holders be forced to relinquish one of their elected posts in January 2008 — makes sense. I would strengthen it a bit further, though, disqualifying anyone who holds a management-level public job (school superintendent or assistant superintendent, township manager, sewer authority director, etc.) from holding a legislative office (and a county office in the county in which they work).
It’s time to make them choose.
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Hank Kalet 