Editor’s Note

Matter of State

By:
   Readers of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press may have noticed a subtle change in our approach to state government.
   In the past, we’ve limited our coverage of the state Legislature to issues with direct impact on one of our communities: Route 92, the MOM line, juvenile justice (as it concerns the youth jail in Monroe), the state Development and Redevelopment Plan. Occasionally, we would do a reaction piece on state legislation — the smoking ban, for instance, or the imposition of a new core curriculum on school districts.
   Our reasoning was pretty simple: We are a local paper that focuses on local issues. And we were not willing to sacrifice local coverage to devote the kind of resources necessary to offer a fair and comprehensive overview of the candidates and the issues.
   My thinking on coverage of the state Legislature began to change with the 14th District Assembly race in 2005, which featured former South Brunswick Police Chief Michael Paquette. (The 14th includes Cranbury, Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick.) We stayed away from the race until the very end, when we sought opinions from the candidates on several issues with local impact, and then covered the results on election night.
   In the end, our approach seemed unsatisfying — and confusing. It attempted to split the difference, but left local voters with only a small piece of a larger picture, and left candidates wondering what to expect from us.
   That experience put the issue back in play. The budget shutdown and ensuing special joint legislative session on government reform and property taxes — and the huge impact that they would have on local voters — was the play that changed the game, making me realize that we can no longer sit on the sidelines when dealing with the state Legislature.
   Consider the property tax issue. It is the governor and the Legislature that have the most direct impact, because they set the parameters within which local governments and school boards must function. This includes everything from deciding how much state money will be used to pay for local services and what services must be provided to the setting of spending and taxing limits.
   The same goes for rules covering elections and campaign-financing, public contracting, teacher certification, educational testing and curriculum, law enforcement and so many other issues.
   Add to this the numbers: The approximately 85,000 residents of Cranbury, Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick represent about 40 percent of the total population of the district.
   So we will be covering the campaign. But we will not be covering the "race" — i.e., we will not be reporting on polling and our coverage of "events" will be limited to those that take place in one of the four towns we cover.
   Our approach will be issued-based. Starting in June — after the primary officially sets the field — we plan to run regular stories on the issues on which the candidates could have an impact should they be elected. These may include: property taxes; government consolidation and shared services; campaign finance and pay-to-play reforms; capital punishment; the state highway fund; civil unions and same-sex marriage; along with issues that might be considered a tad more local like the MOM line, the widening of Route 1 and the expansion of urban enterprise zones to include towns like Jamesburg.
   This is just a sampling. We are hoping our readers will aid us in choosing the issues — we will be placing a forum question on the Top Stories section of both the South Brunswick Post (www.southbrunswickpost.com) and The Cranbury Press (www.cranburypress.com) Web sites seeking input, and readers are encouraged to e-mail me ([email protected]) with suggestions.
   And we plan to meet with each candidate with the intention of making endorsements.
   Our goal is to be the one place that local voters can go to find out what they need to know about the two Senate candidates — Assemblyman Bill Baroni, the Hamilton Republican, and Democrat Seema Singh, the former state ratepayer advocate from South Brunswick — and four Assembly candidates — Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein, a Plainsboro Democrat; labor leader Wayne D’Angelo, a Hamilton Democrat; Hamilton Township Councilman Tom Goodwin, a Republican; and former Jamesburg Councilman Adam Bushman, a Republican.
   Let me know what you think.
The Editor’s Note column will run as often as necessary as a way to explain the workings of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press to our readers. So, please, send me your questions about the paper, about the news business, about the decisions we’ve made and any suggestions you have. I’ll try and answer as many as I can in future Editor’s Notes. Call me at (732) 329-9214, write me at P.O. Box 309, Dayton, N.J. 08810 or e-mail me at [email protected].