At an 11 am press conference today, the LD37 Legislators, Senator Loretta Weinberg & Assemblymembers Valerie Huttle and Gordon Johnson explained their findings after months of painstaking research of NJ corruption, and announced their plans to reform NJ ethics laws. Their approach is based firmly on the hard facts obtained that show clearly that the current laws are full of loopholes that allow literally MILLIONS of dollars to flow from the taxpayers to a few individuals. What they uncovered, they said was only "the tip of the iceberg".
They want to clean house and end the "Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Government":
1) "Shadow Governments" - like the Passaic Valley Sewer Authority and the Bergen County Improvement Authority. These public entities have absolutely no oversight and you need to be a detective to connect where the money goes. Also, the Governor has no veto power over their meeting minutes - which means he has no ability to stop an action taken by the body.
2) Part Time legislature - which can present conflict of interest issues.
3) Loopholes in State "Pay to Play" laws. Currently, there is not enough trransparency about where the money goes when PACs are involved. Also, Pay-to-Play laws don't stop redevelopers from seeking eminent domain to cash in.
4) Unfairness in political party operations. Selection of party officials and the review process used to fill legislative vacancies is currently not transparent. If you need a reminder, see my diaries on the BCDO.
5) Campaign financing. It currently allows Pay-to-Play to occur and removes the people from the process. Money gets funneled up down and all around the state.
6) Lack of Transparency in hiring lobbyists. Currently in places like the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, folks like Joe Ferriero (you knew he'd come up - didn't you?) who not only is a paid employee of the commission - (he makes $45,000 per year WITH pension and benefits) on top of running his own private law firm, earned an additional $719,000 in legal fees in 2006 ALONE. Nope, I didn't add an extra zero. He made over half a million in addition to his salary and benefits. If you count since 2001 - he has made $4.5 MILLION dollars in legal billings alone. That's taxpayer money, folks. YOUR Money. With NO oversight.
7) Loopholes in local government ethics laws. In non partisan elections, such as in Teaneck, local government officials don't need to submit financial disclosure statements until a year after they are sworn in. That's a long time. Talk about locking the barn door too late.
NJ Legislators have already brought some bills to the Legislature. Here is a rundown of each bill, by name:
S677/A1730 by Weinberg/Johnson/Voss
This would give the Governor veto power over the minutes of any commission as a check so that he can prevent the body from taking action or hiring a no show lobbyist or "consultant".
SCR122/ACR259 by Doria/Greenstein and Gusciora/Manzo/Johnson respectively
These bills would provide for a full time legislature. The difference in the two bills has to do with how the salaries are set - by either the legislature itself, or an independent commission.
S214/A4164 by Weinberg/Karcher/Buono/Johnson/Huttle
Would close loopholes in the current "Pay-To-Play" laws.
S1599/A4235 by Weinberg/Karcher/Johnson/Huttle
This would force even those running in non-partisan elections to file their financial records withoin 30 days of being sworn in instead of a year AFTER.
Senator Weinberg, when announcing these initiatives, collectively called "Clean Up New Jersey", stated that public service should once again be a "public mission & not a moneymaking machine for any one or any one group of people."
Assemblywoman Huttle stated that "The buck has to stop somewhere" while speaking about the use of a state comptroller who would perform an annual audit and act as check against the kind of abuse of the public trust in matters of financial responsibility.
As part of the initiative, Assemblywoman Huttle spoke of a new process whereby taxpayers could get online access to see exactly how many lobbyists are employed by a public entity.
New bills will be announced on October 16 jointly with the Citizen's Campaign. Further measures include limiting contibutions from those doing business with public entities. and also to limit contributions by developers in discussions with public entities. Keeping money in the district in which it is raised is one way they hope to limit the influence of PACS as well as limiting the # of PACS one individual can manage.
Gordon Johnson said that Clean Elections financing is part of the whole effort and puts "Democracy back in the people's hands". It gets the average voter much more involved in the whole process. While Clean Elections still needs a little tweaking paper-workwise, the LD37 team said that they hoped the rest of the state would use Clean Elections as it clearly worked. They pointed out that Dems in clearly R districts earned their Clean Elections funds.
And now, all is clear. I get it. I totally understand why Joe Ferriero and Dennis Oury spent 4 million of BCDO money on the race for the County Executive in Bergen County. You see, the County gets to appoint the folks to these "shadow governments" with the ability to spend your money like drunken sailors WITHOUT having to ask you or even EXPLAIN it to you. You have to control the County appointments in order to control these money making machines. Joe Ferriero doesn't care about Hillary, or even Scott Garrett, which is why he spent so little to win the 5th seat. It would not have affected his secret ATM the way that losing the County Executive seat would have. Here is the explanation of what has been nagging me for so long. It isn't about politics, or even government, it is solely about greed and personal gain for a few people.
Now, this works the same ALL OVER THE STATE apparently, so if you are in South Jersey too, take heed. Get your legislators on the phone and tell them you want to "Clean Up New Jersey" and that you want them to pass these initiatives or you will NOT vote for them this November. The power is in the hands of the Counties, and to keep the money flowing, folks like Joe Ferriero will do whatever they can, to keep control of the Party Organizations and the County government in their hands for the reasons, your LD37 team outlined today. And, they will do ANYTHING to control state legislative seats that could potentially pass laws to stop their gravy train. The reason the Senate seats are the most valuable is because of Senatorial Courtesy which can prevent an honest judicial appointee from investigating what the folks in the shadows want to keep secret.
If NJ folks are still wondering why living here costs so much after this explanation, they aren't paying attention. Wake them up.
P.S. This took a lot of homework, but no Clean Elections money was used in this act of selfless pure public service, and according to elec, it would have been allowed ANYWAY, Ms. Nibot.
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