Are Republican Legislators finally ready to stand up for Good Government?

by: Jason Springer

Fri Jun 18, 2010 at 06:11:09 PM EDT

We've written a good deal here about Governor Christie's attempted power grab to eliminate the independent State Commission of Investigation (SCI) and move its responsibilities into the executive branch. Up until now, many Republicans have remained silent, but quietly yesterday we saw A2986 introduced:

The bill's text isn't available yet, but the sponsors are Assemblymen DeCroce and Bramnick. The original idea put forth by the Governor was to consolidate the Medicaid Inspector, Inspector General and SCI under the Office of the Comptroller in the executive branch. As you can see, the SCI isn't included in their bill. The Governor could still defund the SCI in his budget through a line item veto. That would force the Legislature to override his veto in order to maintain the state's most successful corruption fighting agency. Hopefully this bill is an indication that the Republican legislators have finally decided to put the people's interest above their Governor's endless appetite for power.

Jason Springer :: Are Republican Legislators finally ready to stand up for Good Government?

Tags: GOP, Chris Christe, corruption, State Commission of Investigation, SCI, featured, (All Tags)

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Are Republican Legislators finally ready to stand up for Good Government? | 2 comments

Consolidation Benefits. (0.00 / 1)

Hi Jason. Through your eyes, viewing your perceived enemy, pretty much anything they do will be suspicious.

But, through the eyes of we-the-people, what we see is consolidation of all the little fiefdoms out there. Each having an overpriced leadership and lots of patronage job opportunities.

Government has grown itself over time into a huge octopus with more and more arms added each year.

The way the octopus grows keeps creating more and more "bubbles" on the organization charts of state government. Each of those bubbles having a high-priced leadership all competing for a piece of the public's pocketbook.

A consolidation strategy takes all those fiefdom bubbles, and moves their functions of value into one entity, one high priced leader instead of 2 or 3 or 4.

So instead of say, 10 autonomous bubbles, frequently acting at cross purposes, you have one bubble with maybe 10 departments within it all sharing overhead resources.

This is what we have asked Christie to do, shrink government, get rid of useless appointee roles, eliminate waste. Establishing clear and concise lines of authority is important, and cannot be done when there are so many of those bubbles floating around loose and not pinned down to the main operational management entity which is the Executive Office of Governor.

Remember, these changes will stay in effect and benefit your own party when your turn comes around again to lead. If y'all break them back up again and set up more little fiefdoms, then it will be obvious to the public the creation of patronage jobs is more important than efficient management of the states affairs.

by: Nora's Tea Party @ Sat Jun 19, 2010 at 21:20:28 PM UTC

I'm glad (0.00 / 0)

the SCI isn't there, but frankly, I'd like the Inspector General and State Comptroller rolled into the SCI instead of the other way around. The IG and SC should be JUST AS INDEPENDENT as the SCI is now.

And if New Jersey had single payer AS I HAVE ADVOCATED FOR, we wouldn't need the Medicaid Inspector General.

It turns out having means-tested needs-based programs are more expensive per capita than one would think.

-Jordan O

http://pinelandsprogressive.blogspot.com

by: IndependentNJ @ Sat Jun 19, 2010 at 23:31:34 PM UTC