Daily Journal Corporation

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...

It's past time to end delays in ethics reform
Editorial, Daily Journal, January 6, 2007

New Jersey residents want to trust those they elect to office. They want to have faith in government and want to believe lawmakers put the interests of their constituents before their own.

But time after time, state lawmakers fail to earn that trust even when attempting reforms. Such is the case with a package of ethics reforms proposed by Senate President Richard J. Codey.

There are many things we like about the ethics package. One proposal would end lawmakers' practice of inserting their pet projects into the budget at the last moment and in the middle of the night. This past year, the Democrat-controlled Legislature added more than $350 million to the budget that also raised taxes, although such disgraceful shenanigans are truly bipartisan.

It also would ban all gifts to legislators and their staffs (instead of just limiting them to $250 or less), expand the state's nepotism policy to local governments and increase ethics training for lawmakers and their staffs.

These measures are all well and good and much needed, but the reform package also stands out for what it doesn't include.

It fails to include a total ban on pay to play, whereby campaign contributors receive no-bid government contracts. Currently, government contracts of up to $17,500 are excluded, and they shouldn't be. It also doesn't include any measures that close the loophole that allows lawmakers to receive campaign contributions from contractors indirectly through a third party.

We also don't understand why taxpayers and voters have to wait until July 1 to see this ethics reform package approved. If lawmakers were truly committed to ethics reform, it would only take days or a few weeks to make it the law, not months and possibly years.

It seems to us that lawmakers are only going as far as they think they must to convince constituents they are reforming the way business is done in Trenton, instead of making the system totally transparent and fair, unequivocally and immediately.

Delay, delay, delay is not the way to restore the people's faith in government.

CORZINE, INSPIRED BY OLYMPIC SNOWBOARD COMPETITION, DOES 'LINKED 180'S'
--After telling voters no new taxes, now tells them to get out their wallets then follows it up by announcing that Property Tax Reform has fallen from 1st to 6th priority--