reform – Page 4 – Hank Kalet

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

Reform-minded

Charles Stile in The Record touches on a note similar to the one I strike in my own column today: the unlikelihood that the Legislature will pass real reforms.

Governor Corzine has promised a renewed agenda on the issue this year, and so have leaders of the Legislature. But Corzine’s State of the State speech next week will be almost solely devoted to his plan to restructure state debt by raising tolls. That obsession will probably eat up much of his agenda this year. And he is not likely to do something dramatic, such as extend New Jersey’s pay-to-play ban with a sweeping executive order, which has been pushed by campaign finance advocates.

There will be little appetite or time for sweeping reforms this year. Besides, the Democratic leadership is not inclined to unilaterally level the playing field just because their Republican counterparts say it’s the right thing to do.

Senate President Dick Codey is a cautious incrementalist, not a firebrand reformer. Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts wants to “put everything on the table” for discussion and also talks of a future in which all legislative contests operate under “clean elections” guidelines. Sounds intriguing, but I suspect we’ll see a raft of smaller reforms while we wait for the full realization of his utopian vision.

Stile then offers some interesting ideas — “small, albeit important steps that lawmakers can take this year that could serve as critical building blocks of reform”:

Require candidates and campaign committees to spend most of their contributions on their own races. This would limit sending — or “wheeling” — large blocks of money from one part of the state to another.

Shrewd contributors donate to several county committees and races, with the hope (and tacit understanding) that it will be spent for some of the sky’s-the-limit battles. But the practice allows donors to evade contribution limits and makes party leaders indebted to special interests who pay the tab. Codey has talked about passing a law that plainly states that “wheeling” is illegal. That’s not enough.

Limit the amount of money legislative leaders can spend on races. There was something surreal last year in watching legislative leaders wiring World Bank-sized loans to pay for life-and-death power struggles in the wilderness of Cape May and Cumberland counties.

The only ones who benefited were political consultants, who got a percentage for the cost of producing all those negative mailers and television ads. I know this is wishful thinking, but I don’t feel the panel that promoted the creation of these legislative leadership committees in 1993 envisioned giving them this kind of corporate power to raise and spend money.

Ban state contractors from making donations to legislative leaders. The pay-to-play ban prohibits donors from receiving lucrative state contracts if they gave contributions to the governor or to the campaign accounts controlled by the governor’s party, such as county committees. But donors get around that by giving to legislative leaders, who are exempt from the ban.

Close the loophole in the state pay-to-play ban that exempts politically connected law firms, engineers, architects and other professional services. Technically, the ban does restrict these firms from getting state work, but it only forbids principals who hold at least a 10 percent equity stake in the firm. That allows firms’ partners and associates to continue giving without fear of penalty.

These are intriguing reforms that, absent the larger changes needed, could keep the notion of ethics on the table.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

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.

School funding: Let the fight begin

Gov. Jon Corzine is ready to wade into the swamp that is school funding in New Jersey, a move that could go a long way toward determining what real tax and budget reform will look like.

After more than a year of review, Gov. Jon S. Corzine will propose a new school financing formula as early as next week that would give at least $400 million in new state money to poor and disadvantaged children who live outside traditional inner-city school districts, according to officials familiar with the plan.

The new formula would replace a two-tiered system that concentrates education spending on 31 districts in historically poor cities like Newark, Camden and Paterson.

The current arrangement, known as the Abbott system, has been widely criticized as shortchanging the other 584 districts in largely suburban and rural areas, some of which serve children just as needy. The new approach would apportion money to schools based on the characteristics of the students, including income, language ability and special academic needs.

The new aid formula is likely to create a political firestorm in the state — legislators have irresponsibly pit the urban schools against middle-income suburban ones — and certainly will land in court. This is especially likely because the looming budget gap has killed any chance that the state will boost funding to the level necessary before the plan has been unveiled.

According to the Times, the governor is proposing an increase in school funding of about $400 million, which sounds like a lot but isn’t when you take into account that the state pays such a small portion of school funding across the state now.

That means that, in order to create a formula that addresses the main issues — equalizing funding for rich and poor, ensuring that all students in the state have access to the same level of education, cutting property taxes — school spending in the state will probably have to be cut, a move destined to create more problems than it solves and that could end up benefitting no one, while hurting the court-protected Abbott districts. (And this doesn’t even take into account future funding.)

If that happens, the courts are sure to dismantle the formula, sending everyone back to the drawing board.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

Shoot high, governor

I want to offer the governo kudos for the promise he makes in this column by Record columnist Charles Stile, but given his record of backing away from forceful statements, I’ll wait. In fact, he backs off before he even gets started:

Corzine said he is realistic about what he can get the Legislature to agree to.

“We will put out a full agenda, but as in most things in life when you go through a legislative process, you don’t get everything that you want,” he said, but added, “there is a good chance that we can build good momentum that can move the ball a long way.”

My advice is this: Set your goals high and make legislators explain to the public why they can’t get behind comprehensive reforms. And don’t be afraid to work across party lines. The minority party can be a very useful tool here.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.