Irony in the Chamber
Posted September 6, 2007

Yesterday, the halls of Trenton witnessed a meeting of the New Jersey State Legislature’s Joint Committee on Ethical Standards.

Created 35 years ago, the 16-member bipartisan Committee, according to the State’s website, “is responsible for administering the Conflicts of Interest Law and the Code of Ethics for members of the Legislature and officers and employees of the legislative branch of government.” In addition, the Committee investigates “possible violations of the Law … [and] is empowered to impose a fine … or suspend from office an officer or employee of the Legislature for violating the Law or Code.”

A worthy-sounding objective, indeed.

Yet, according to the Newark Star Ledger, in its 35-year history, the Committee “has sanctioned only four lawmakers despite the fact various lawmakers have been convicted of criminal offenses during that time.”

Additionally, the Committee itself has been embroiled in its own fracas. The Ledger reports that the Committee met in October 2006 after more than a year’s hiatus, only to spend several hours fighting before choosing a chairman. When the new chairman resigned after fewer than six months’ service, the Committee reconvened in May 2007 at a meeting that ended in a standstill when members weren’t able to agree on a successor.

Even as the committee charged with safeguarding ethics can’t seem to get its own act together, Governor Corzine on Monday signed into law ethics legislation which formally creates the crime of “corruption of public resources.”

In essence according to the governor’s office, the law, entitled the Public Corruption Profiteering Penalty Act, “makes it illegal to knowingly misuse taxpayer dollars and other public resources.”

Our question is, Was misusing public funds ever not illegal?

No sooner was the ink dry on the new law or had the gavel dropped in the Ethics Committee hearing than eleven New Jersey public officials, including a mayor and two state lawmakers, were arrested yesterday on bribery charges related to school construction and insurance contracts.

And herein lies the irony.

We have a legislature that deems it necessary to codify a ban on misusing taxpayer dollars, an Ethics Committee that can’t seem to get its own house in order let alone accomplish its mission, and a string of corruption arrests and charges among New Jersey’s public officials that has been ongoing not for months but for years.

With state tax rates scaling rocket heights, New Jersey families are left to subsidize the rising costs of the lack of integrity among many of our legislators.

New Jersey’s public trust has been violated so often that our state has become the ethical laughingstock of the nation. With statewide elections just a few months away, it is vital that concerned New Jerseyans become active and involved citizens and vote for the officials and candidates who not only talk the ethical talk, but also walk the ethical walk.

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