| The Joint Legislative Committee on Ethical Standards, instituted with good intentions by Speaker Joe Roberts in 2008 to replace the previous toothless body, hasn't exactly rocked the boat.
The committee, chaired by legendary Rutgers professor Alan Rosenthal (who you probably remember as the 11th member in this year's legislative redistricting, but is also a nationally prominent political science scholar) often goes months without meeting, moves very slowly, and, as far as I can tell, has dismissed every complaint brought before it since it was reconstituted - it's hard to tell because there is very little information about the committee online. While the reforms instituted by Roberts (a key reform was having outside members, not legislators, serve on the committee) seem to have improved the process and made it somewhat more independent, the committee (again from what I can tell) hasn't actually taken action on any complaints. Not even talking about finding people guilty of ethics violations - talking about even opening an investigation instead of throwing it out on the papers.
Which made what happened to Asm. Scott Rumana this week fairly incredible. After many months of consideration, the Committee voted to prepare charges against Asm. Rumana this Tuesday. The Committee had nine months earlier voted to dismiss several other serious charges against Rumana but brought charges on this one, appearance of impropriety, for detailed consideration (you get a sense of the speed at which the Committee moves here...)
More on the substance of the charges, and what the committee does next, below the fold... |
| These charges have been brought by Bill Brennan, the Democratic candidate running against Rumana. They also are generally supported by the anti-Rumana factions of the Passaic County Republican Party, "GOP Strong," who really, really, hate Scott Rumana - in the putting out daily virulent press release kind of way.
Here's a primer on the issue. Basically, Rumana, as the Mayor of Wayne, decided it would be great to set up a new energy non-profit, Wayne Energy Corp., chaired by Rumana, to build an energy co-generation plant in Wayne. The deal would work as follows:
"According to the assemblyman, a private entity would own the plant and bill WEC for its services. WEC would simply pass that bill to the township for payment and pass the payment back to the energy company running the plant. Construction and operation of the plant would be planned, contracted and paid for by the outside entity and the WEC would have no authority over hiring."
Rumana further claims that the only reason for having such a non-profit is to shield the town from liability.
The whole thing sounds like it bears further investigation - and in fact the complaint sought investigation on factors such as whether Rumana had an improper personal financial interest in the energy corporation. But the committee had whittled down the complaint to appearance of impropriety.
Particularly important to that charge was Rumana's attempt to appear before the Board of Public Utilities on WEC's behalf and communication with the State Department of Education on the matter. Legislators generally cannot represent outside entities that they are personally involved in before state agencies under the Legislature's ethics rules.
The Committee's vote, while too late in a long process, is promising in at least moving to an investigation stage what seems worth, well, investigating. We will have to see what evidence comes out of that process - or maybe not since the Committee other than its meetings appears to operate in secret with no web site, etc. And we will have to hope that the process does not continue at its current glacial pace. |
.gif)
