BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer
LITTLE SILVER — A longtime borough councilman has thrown his hat into the ring for one of the two available 12th District Assembly seats, making the state-mandated school budget cap his platform.
Declan O’Scanlon has announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for one of the seats currently held by Democrats Michael Panter and Dr. Robert Morgan.
O’Scanlon, 41, said the cornerstone of his campaign is fighting to roll back S-1701, a bill signed into law last summer by then Gov. James McGreevey which puts caps on school administrative spending, yearly surplus and annual budget increases.
Both Panter and Morgan voted in favor of this bill.
“S-1701 is one of the most poorly and irresponsible pieces of legislation ever to be passed in New Jersey,” he said in an interview last week.
“It’s purely a political maneuver that does nothing to address the systemic problems leading to the state’s outrageously high property taxes, but only gives the impression of addressing the problem.”
O’Scanlon said that he believes if the legislation is taken to its logical conclusion, within a few years there will be an elimination of vital school programs and a dramatic increase in class sizes.
“All that will result is a dramatically degraded quality of life for people throughout New Jersey,” said O’Scanlon, “particularly in the 12th District.”
He said residents of the 12th District, which includes the towns of Colts Neck, Englishtown, Fair Haven, Freehold Borough, Freehold Township, Little Silver, Manalapan, Marlboro, Millstone, Oceanport, Red Bank, Shrewsbury Borough, Shrewsbury Township and Tinton Falls, are positioned economically between the richest and poorest people in the state.
“We are the people on whose backs government budgets get balanced,” he said. “We’re the people who get squeezed.”
According to O’Scanlon, eventually S-1701 will likely cause the quality of schools to decrease and property values to also go down.
O’Scanlon, has been on the Little Silver Borough Council since 1994 and works as a consultant in the wireless telecommunications field.
He said his political interest began when he was a young child.
“It first probably began the day my mother sent me off to the third grade covered with McGovern buttons,” he said.
Since that time, O’Scanlon said he has filled many different political roles, including being named to the Governor’s Highway Traffic Safety Policy Advisory Council by former Gov. Christie Whitman and founding the Monmouth County Young Republican organization in 1994.
O’Scanlon said he believes young people are the most impacted by political decisions, but are the least active in politics.
“It doesn’t matter where you align yourself,” he said. “We need to involve young people more and sooner.”
O’Scanlon said one of his guiding principles is, “It’s more important to seek the truth than it is to perpetuate your previously held beliefs.”
“I am not one of those arrogant politicians who believe that they are omnipotent,” he said. “I seek out people who disagree with me just in case I’m wrong. I want to hear other sides to it and I’m not afraid to change my mind.”
He said that he is willing to make the tough decisions, saying that it is easier to keep wasteful programs from starting in the first place, than it is to cut them once they are running.
O’Scanlon said he believes the current Democratic leadership in Trenton is full of “inflated rhetoric and do-nothing attitude,” according to a press release from his campaign headquarters.
O’Scanlon said his campaign has raised about $35,000 so far, and he hopes that this is just the beginning.
Four other people are vying for the Assembly seat nomination, according to Dan Gallic, executive director of the Monmouth County Republican Organization. They are Mike Fitzgerald, Wall; Evan Maltz, Millstone, Jennifer Beck, a current Red Bank councilwoman, and Claire Farragher, who lost her Assembly seat in 2003.
The nomination process, which has not been decided on yet, according to Gallic, will take place some time in March, with the filing deadline on April 11.
“It’s an outstanding field of candidates who are vying for the nomination,” O’Scanlon said. “I’d be happy to call any one of them my running mate.”
O’Scanlon was born in Marlboro and raised in Little Silver, making him a lifelong resident of the 12th District, according to the press release.
O’Scanlon has also served as the vice chairman of the Senate Task Force on Alcohol Related Motor Vehicle Accidents and Fatalities, and currently serves as Little Silver’s police commissioner.