Legislators earn credit for taking action.
New Jersey residents and taxpayers have had good reason to be critical of their state legislators lately.
After promising to tackle the Garden State’s most pressing problems head-on in 2006, lawmakers have steadily retreated from the ambitious agenda they laid out for themselves at the start of the year. Tax reform is stalled. Ethics legislation is stalled. And as 2007, a legislative election year, looms ever larger on the horizon, the chances of meaningful progress on these and other substantive issues grow slimmer and slimmer.
So when the Legislature does something right when it takes forceful action to put New Jersey on the map as a leader in the development and implementation of good, sound, progressive public policy it deserves to be commended.
This past week, the Legislature did just that on two fronts.
First, it responded, swiftly and appropriately, to the state Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage, adopting a measure that will allow same-sex partners to enter into civil unions that afford them the same due process and equal protection guarantees enjoyed by married couples. The measure stops short, however, of calling such a union marriage.
This is precisely what the four-justice majority on the high court encouraged the Legislature to do. (The three-justice minority felt the court should have gone ahead and authorized same-sex marriage as a matter of constitutional law.) More important, the court gave the lawmakers a deadline six months to craft the statutory framework to implement its ruling.
It’s worth noting that the New Jersey Legislature has a woeful track record when it comes to meeting court-imposed deadlines. In two policy areas in particular public school financing and affordable housing legislators have allowed virtually every deadline the court has set over the past 30 years to pass without taking action. As a result, both the Robinson v. Cahill and Abbott v. Burke school financing cases led to significant policy initiatives established and implemented by the judiciary, not the Legislature. And Mount Laurel I, II and III created affordable-housing guidelines and rules (including the infamous "builder’s remedy") set down by the court, not by lawmakers.
But in response to the court’s gay-marriage ruling, the Legislature took less than two of the six months the court allowed it to reach a reasoned and sensible decision. True, this subject may not be nearly as complicated (or, in our view, as consequential to the state) as public school financing or affordable housing. But what we feared would happen six months of pandering and posturing over an emotionally charged issue that is rich in symbolism and practically devoid of substance didn’t. And for that we commend the Legislature.
We likewise applaud the lawmakers for approving a measure that will appropriate $270 million to build and equip five stem-cell and biomedical research facilities around the state. This legislation which, like the civil-union bill, Gov. Corzine has said he will sign into law could make New Jersey a leader in the research of treatments and development of cures for some of the world’s most tragic diseases. Barring a dramatic change in federal policy regarding embryonic stem-cell research an unlikely prospect in the remaining two years of George W. Bush’s presidency New Jersey is now positioned to join California in the forefront of this vitally important effort.
Bold, decisive, innovative, progressive these are not adjectives that normally come tripping off the tongue in describing the New Jersey Legislature. But on those rare occasions when they do apply, we would be remiss not to use them. We gladly do so in tribute to the final actions our lawmakers took in 2006.

