EDITORIAL: Discussing the nepotism controversy within the state Assembly.
Republicans running for Assembly and Senate in the 14th Legislative District say they are shocked at the recent revelation that Assemblyman Gary Guear, a Democrat from Hamilton, has been paying his wife $55,000 a year as a legislative aide.
Sen. Peter Inverso, the incumbent Republican who is also from Hamilton, was so aghast he promptly introduced a bill to prohibit state lawmakers from placing relatives on the legislative payroll. His running mates, Bill Baroni and Sidna Mitchell, who are challenging Assemblyman Guear and Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein in the 14th District (which includes South Brunswick), were at Sen. Inverso’s side as he unveiled his anti-nepotism measure.
Hiring one’s relatives isn’t exactly a new development in government, and Assemblyman Guear is by no means the only officeholder known to engage in the practice. Though precise numbers are hard to come by, published reports have identified at least 23 sitting members of the Assembly and Senate nearly 20 percent of the Legislature who employ one or more family members as legislative aides. This includes Senate Co-President John Bennett, who retains both his mother and mother-in-law as $9,000-a-year part-time liaisons to the senior-citizen community.
It bears pointing out that Sen. Bennett is the Republican leader in the Legislature, which is all one needs to know when calculating the probability of Sen. Inverso’s bill ever making it beyond the press conference stage. It is also worth noting that former GOP Assemblyman Paul Kramer, with whom Sen. Inverso shared a district office for many years, hired his sister-in-law for his legislative staff, and that Sen. Inverso’s wife and one of his daughters were hired by Mercer County’s Republican administration.
So you’ll forgive us if we don’t find Sen. Inverso’s crusade against nepotism altogether convincing.
But it isn’t just the senator’s transparent political motivation that gives us pause. We’re not at all sure that a ban on nepotism represents good public policy. It surely makes for a great sound bite get those good-for-nothing relatives off the government payroll but in practice, we wonder if there isn’t a baby-with-the-bathwater issue here: In banning officeholders’ relatives from the public payroll, are we denying any number of highly competent people the opportunity to make useful contributions to public service?
To cite but one example, a lot of people called for a ban on nepotism when President-elect John F. Kennedy announced he was nominating his younger brother, Robert, to be attorney general. A couple of years later, the only person we can recall complaining bitterly about the appointment was Jimmy Hoffa.
We have no idea whether Assemblyman Guear’s wife, Donna, performs her staff responsibilities capably or spends her days counting paper clips. We do know, however, that if the assemblyman and his staff are not meeting the needs of constituents, they’ll pay for it in the next election. And if enough people are offended by his decision to hire his wife, he’ll pay for that, too.
That is why we would have no problem with Mr. Baroni and Ms. Mitchell, Assemblyman Guear’s direct challengers, disclosing and even criticizing his hiring practices. We are less than taken with Sen. Inverso’s sudden awakening to the evils of nepotism, given his evident lack of concern about it for more than a decade in office.

