Raymond Bramucci

CORODEMUS SAYS DISCLOSURE OF PORK PROJECTS WOULD NOT MAKE PRACTICE ANY MORE 'ETHICAL'

ISSUE IS ABOUT LEGISLATORS GETTING GRANTS FOR EMPLOYERS OR ORGANIZATIONS FROM WHICH THEY PERSONALLY BENEFIT

Assemblyman Steve Corodemus today said that the chairman of the Legislative Joint Committee on Ethical Standards is missing the point of the current ethics complaints pending before the panel if he believes a proposal to give advance notice about pork in the state budget would solve the problem.

November 6, 2006
Senator Gerald Cardinale

Contact: Michelle Peal
(201) 567-2324

Another Ethics Promise Broken

At the last meeting of the ethics panel, the Republicans agreed to the Democrats choice of Raymond Bramucci as chairman, in exchange for the promise that the committee would have an aggressive agenda that would include three meetings in November. Now it appears the Democrats have reneged on that promise.

The failure of the ethics panel to stick to its schedule raises more questions about how serious the majority party is about cleaning up Trenton. The October 23 meeting was the first committee meeting in 17 months. In today’s compromised ethical climate it is imperative that the committee meet and carry out its statutory requirement to investigate ethics complaints.

Right now the ethics panel is considered at best a waste of time and at worst a joke. In order to regain the public trust , the Joint Legislative Committee on Ethical Standards must stick to its aggressive schedule and convene three times in November as originally planned.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT ...

End the charade on ethics panel

Editorial, Asbury Park Press, October 25, 2006

The unseemly behavior exhibited at Monday's legislative ethics panel meeting offered further evidence that such panels should consist of only public members. This particular panel should be disbanded and folded into the State Ethics Commission, as recommended nearly a year ago in an ethics reform study commissioned by then-acting Gov. Richard J. Codey.

The meeting was dominated by legislators who spent most of their time bickering along partisan lines, accomplishing next to nothing. It was the panel's first such meeting in 17 months. With the ethical lapses that seem to surface daily in Trenton, that alone is unconscionable.