The Corruption Protection Acts are before the Assembly on Monday

By Rubashov

On Monday, at 10am, the Assembly State & Local Government Committee will take up three bills that can collectively be called “The Corruption Protection Acts”. A-4889, ACR-166, and A-4094 all seek to undermine the already weak ethical transparency laws that were created to afford New Jersey taxpayers some measure of defense against the predatory actions of the political class in what has become widely known as “The Soprano State.”

Note: When you remember that the last Republican to win statewide in New Jersey – Chris Christie – did so based on a career battling the exact kind of political corruption “The Corruption Protection Acts” seek to shield, one cannot imagine any minority party member having anything to do with this stuff. But in case they have forgotten, let us remind them:

“Politics in New Jersey is organized crime.”

(from the documentary)

A-4889 “removes the requirement that local government officers disclose their property addresses, including their home address, in certain financial disclosure statements.  Instead, this bill will only require local government officers to disclose the county and municipality where their property is located.”

In other words, the property taxpayers of a municipality will no longer have an easy way of finding out if the politician who just raised their property taxes pays his property taxes.
 
This legislation acts as a shield to the kind of corruption in local New Jersey government that investigative journalist John Stossel uncovered a few years ago…
 

“Is it true that four (members of local government) get loans from (a bank controlled by a big developer) and is it true that (the mayor) gets a discounted apartment in (that developer’s) building?”

Investigative Journalist John Stossel

This video and an earlier one on the subject were watched on YouTube more than two million times.

In an investigative report, Stossel details how the town’s mayor and three members of council had financial ties to a local developer under federal indictment. The only way a citizen could figure this out was through a local government ethics financial disclosure statement that listed the politician’s address and the address of property he owns. But that could never happen under A-4889.
 
Court records – both criminal and civil – are all tied to property addresses. So are tax liens and liens for unpaid debts, foreclosures and bankruptcies, lawsuits and ethics proceedings. Often the only way to confirm which common name is connected to which legal action is by an address. Under A-4889, voters will not be permitted to have the information necessary to make an informed judgment about the actions of someone they employ to collect and spend their property taxes. Voters will have to take politicians at their word, there will be no way to “trust but verify”.   
 
By-the-way, the current law is already lax because the local government ethics financial disclosure statement form states that reporting of a home address is “optional”. This makes it impossible for a citizen to check to see if the elected government official actually resides at the address he is registered at. A cursory review of recent filings (2022) uncovered that at least one county official was collecting rental income from the address at which he was registered to vote.
 
A-4889 will further restrict the taxpayers’ right-to-know by blocking access to the address of every parcel and property owned by every local elected official and their spouses in New Jersey. We understand that the impetus behind this is the recent boom in mega-warehouses in New Jersey. Some politicians have some prime parcels that they’d like to sell at inflated prices and some developers would love to buy them.
 
ACR-166 is a “concurrent resolution” that “amends the Legislative Code of Ethics to remove the requirement that legislators disclose their property addresses, including their home address, in annual financial disclosure statements.  Instead, legislators will only be required to disclose the county and municipality where their property is located.” This resolution is designed to “take effect immediately and apply to financial disclosure statements filed in 2023 and thereafter.”
 
In other words, incumbents on the ballot next year could have their dealings with property developers shielded from the eyes of the very electorate who will be asked to vote for them. How can people make an informed judgment if they don’t know, for example, that a legislator is enjoying a substantial property tax break by operating a “fake farm”?
 
With the Murphy administration’s push to convert more agricultural land – even preserved farmland – into lucrative solar fields, voters should know if a politician is profiting from a taxpayer-subsidized industry while benefiting from a property tax break. ACR-166 will protect this kind of institutional corruption.
 
A-4094 goes even further and extends this protection to candidates for elected office in New Jersey. That’s right. Under this bill, you don’t even need to be elected, you just have to run for office.
 
New Jersey has seen every imaginable kind of scumbag run for office, from murderers to pedophiles – there was even a candidate for county office who was later convicted for his role in a plot to kidnap, murder, and eat (yes, eat) his victims. Does the average voter really want to know less about these critters before being asked to vote them into power?
 
According to the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services, A-4094 “prohibits the disclosure of the home address of a person seeking election to a public office, a current elected official, and a former elected official.  Under the bill, ‘elected official’ means any person holding a State or local government office which, under the State Constitution or by law, is filled by the registered voters of a jurisdiction at an election, including a person appointed, selected or otherwise designated to fill a vacancy in such office...”
 
By covering former elected officials, it could shield some of the folks involved in the Sean Caddle murder-for-hire investigation, making it more difficult for local journalists to get to the truth. Even more troubling is the fact that it creates a “political class” in New Jersey with special privileges in law. At its founding, America rejected the idea of creating a nobility. The title “Citizen” was supposed to be as good as it gets. All equal before the law! Everyone on-the-level.
 
Taken together, these Corruption Protection Acts are profoundly un-American and anti-democratic. They create a privileged nobility in New Jersey law that is protected from public scrutiny but has the power to tax, regulate, and spend the public into debt.
 
We will be examining the Corruption Protection Acts and how they relate to historic cases of political corruption and possible current corruption throughout December and into the new year. Stay tuned…            

"We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary."
George Orwell