Dispatches: Progress on ethics reform

By Hank Kalet, Managing Editor
   Gov. Jon Corzine is finally living up to his promises.
   After three years in which his administration failed in its efforts to find a stable revenue source for the state budget or rebuild the state’s crumbling infrastructure — two of his primary goals — he has placed an ambitious ethics reform package on the table and says he plans to push hard to get it implemented.
   The governor, who participated in a telephone press conference with local newspapers Monday, said there is a need for greater transparency and public accountability in government, and that it is important that new rules be put in place to give the state’s residents confidence that elected and appointed officials are working in the public’s interest.
   ”We’re trying to, through ethics reform, deal with financial responsibility to make sure we are not spending money we don’t have to be spending,” he said. “And we are taking actions that would give people a greater sense that the mix of money in politics is not determining the direction of public policy.”
   All I can say is, “it’s about time.”
   As a candidate, Gov. Corzine said he would target the practices of pay-to-play and wheeling, while cracking down on conflicts of interest and altering the composition of the state’s ethics board.
   Three years — and numerous indictments of public officials — have passed and only a handful of reforms have been put in place. He brought back the position of public advocate, eliminated by Gov. Christie Whitman in the 1990s, and created a state comptroller’s position (though its powers were watered down by the state Legislature).
   But pay-to-play (the hiring of contractors who have made political contributions) and wheeling (the practice of passing campaign contributions from committee to committee) remained in place.
   Which is why the ethics reform package he announced last week is so important.
   The governor is using a two-pronged attack — enacting some reforms by executive order and pushing a number through the legislative process. In the end, he is hoping for comprehensive controls on pay-to-play that will be in force at all levels of New Jersey government.
   Prior to the governor’s Sept. 24 executive orders, only state contracts were covered under state rules (towns like Monroe and South Brunswick have their own pay-to-play restrictions in place). Businesses or their principals — those owning at least 10 percent of the business — were ineligible for public contracts worth at least $17,500 if they made reportable campaign contributions (more than $300) to a candidate committee and/or election fund of any gubernatorial candidate, or to any state or county political party committee within the previous 18 months.
   The governor strengthened the earlier rules, enacted by executive order under Gov. Jim McGreevey, by placing restrictions on contributions to local candidates and local party committees for firms seeking state contracts. He also removed the 10 percent requirement, meaning that all partners, no matter how small a stake they may have in a company, are now on the restricted list.
   The governor said he would like to see a more comprehensive ban on pay-to-play at the local level, and he is encouraging the Legislature, as part of his reform package, to cover local contracting, as well.
   He said “there are a number of municipalities that have been proactive in moving forward on (pay-to-play bans), but it is very uneven across the state.”
   ”I think there are only 60 of the 566 municipalities in New Jersey that have taken up these rules,” he said. “We’re asking for uniformity on that so that the public can have the confidence that money in political contributions does not determine where contracts go.”
   At the same time, he does not want state law to pre-empt stronger local laws, but “set a floor for every municipality.”
   He also is calling for a ban on wheeling to limit the ability of individual legislators or county freeholders to act as power brokers outside of their geographical regions.
   ”We want money raised in Bergen to stay in Bergen and money raised at the local level to stay at the local level — within limits,” he said.
   On a related note, I asked him about the recent decision regarding Arizona’s clean elections law, in which its rescue money provision was deemed unconstitutional. The decision, made by a federal judge in Arizona, led legislative leaders to table the New Jersey clean elections experiment for the time being. The Arizona decision was based on a New York ruling over the summer that found unconstitutional a provision of federal rules altering contribution limits when candidates face self-funded opponents.
   He says he remains committed to clean elections, under which candidates voluntarily agree to limit their campaign spending in exchange for public funding. He would “like to continue to expand its operation in the state” and was “disappointed in (the court’s) most recent negative interpretation” of the law.
   ”I am hearing legal advice that there has been an overreading of how much (the earlier New York decision) affects clean elections,” he said.
   He said he is hopeful the state can resume its clean elections program in the future.
   ”The more we can move in that direction, the better we can be served by reducing the role of political contributions as the basis on which candidates are chosen and elections are decided,” he said.
   I hope legislators follow the governor’s lead on this and make restoring public trust in New Jersey government their primary goal.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be e-mailed bly clicking here. His blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.