EDITORIAL

McGreevey must learn to watch step

   It would be fair to say that Gov. James E. McGreevey has made some missteps since taking office.
   His first stumble came a little more than two weeks into his term on the beach in Cape May, where a romantic stroll with his wife ended in a medical emergency. Gov. McGreevey failed to look where he was going, tripped and broke his leg.
   Three months later, he still has to lean on the shoulder of an aide when he does one of his meet-and-greet strolls. By most accounts, however, Gov. McGreevey is reluctant to seek other assistance from his staff — a reaction, perhaps, to another inglorious moment from his earliest days in office.
   Seeking ways to balance next year’s state budget, the governor floated the idea in late March of ending a 24-year-old reciprocal agreement with Pennsylvania that allows commuters from both states to pay income taxes only to the state in which they live. Since New Jersey’s top income tax rate is higher than Pennsylvania’s, somebody in the McGreevey administration calculated that our state’s treasury could be enriched by subjecting commuters from Pennsylvania to New Jersey’s higher tax rate.
   However, the real losers would have been South Jersey residents who commute to Philadelphia and are sheltered, under the agreement, from paying the higher Philadelphia city wage tax. Legislators south of Trenton rebelled, and the plan appears dead.
   Now, it appears, Gov. McGreevey is keeping his own counsel, perhaps not such a good thing. Asked during an interview with the Associated Press how he would go about appointing a successor to retiring Justice Gary Stein, Gov. McGreevey lashed out at former Gov. Whitman, accusing her of making the state’s highest court an "avenue for patronage" by appointing a series of her own cabinet officers to fill vacancies on the bench.
   Had he left it at that, Gov. McGreevey might have kept himself out of trouble. Most observers remember Gov. Whitman’s highly questionable nomination of her attorney general, Peter Verniero, to be the youngest Supreme Court justice in history. When the state Bar Association failed to endorse Mr. Verniero, Gov. Whitman decided to break with 30 years of tradition, begun by former Gov. and Chief Justice Richard J. Hughes, of seeking Bar Association approval.
   Gov. McGreevey, however, went a step further saying, "We need to restore the intellectual capital, the integrity, the gravitas of the New Jersey Supreme Court." The implication — that Gov. McGreevey finds fault not only with the Whitman administration’s appointment-making process but with the quality of the appointees — has sparked a storm of protest, not just from former Gov. Whitman but from nonpartisan court watchers, who still consider the court, both structurally and functionally, one of the finest in the nation.
   Gov. McGreevey, however, does appear to know when he has put his foot in his mouth — and has become adept at extricating it with appropriate self-deprecation. Announcing that he would restore the so-called Hughes Compact with the Bar Association, the governor said "the blessings of Gov. Hughes also include his gift for subtlety, which I clearly could use."
   Clearly.