Should NJ’s new Election Transparency Act – a true oxymoron - affect Teaneck’s local ethics board decision? Teaneck Voices believes Council needs to table its own new ordinance until it has seriously reviewed what are the actual implications for fair and prompt ethics compliance now that this this new state law was passed last Thursday. The Act is being savaged by virtually every open government advocate in the state. They accuse it of eviscerating the substance of the state’s own ethics rues and destroying the state’s own institutional compliance mechanisms.
Background:
Teaneck’s own debate about an ethics board prior to the new law is scheduled to come to a head tomorrow. An introduced ordinance (Ord 10-2023) that would abolish the Township’s ethics board is on the Tuesday April 4 agenda for both a public hearing and then a Council vote to either approve or reject the ordinance.
Abolish it; Send it to the State: Many of those who know the largely failed history of the ethics board which has been on the books in Teaneck for 35 years have recently embraced the view that the town’s conflicts of interest and financial disclosure issues might be better addressed by an entity located far outside the Town – hence, the state’s Local Finance Board in Trenton. After all, isn’t that what more than 95% of the municipalities in New Jersey have decided to do? And, some have pointed out the process of establishing and implementing an effective, equal justice local board mechanism could well prove to be quite expensive and itself take time even to assure it would have a current code adequate to the task.
No - The New Council Should Revive the Local Board: The opposite view is that Teaneck’s new Council could create a much more fair and knowledgeable ethics board here that would better understand the Town and its officials and more actively track and pursue current violations and address the local complaints which allege those violations. . A new Council must already know that some residents have stepped forward asking to be appointed. Indeed, the Trenton mechanism has itself been demonstrably failing to act promptly.
The current Council itself has apparently been split about how to move forward. Here is what happened when Council was trying to decide if the “abolish it” ordinance should be introduced on March 14 after having already once delayed its introduction. Click Here
In fact, the discussion to more fully explore which of the two options would have a better chance of delivering fair and effective compliance has not really happened. Even the public input in Council meetings has been quite limited.
ENTER THE NEW FACTOR: What is the Election Transparency Act of 2023?
Google it! What you find are tirades opposing it and charging the Governor and legislature with a massive act of bad faith. Listen, for example, to Public Policy Professor Carl Golden in today’s Insider NJ piece
- “When Gov. Phil Murphy puts official pen to paper and affixes his signature to the grotesquely misnamed “Elections Transparency Act”, it’s certain he’ll do so in the privacy of his office…
- Whatever concerns candidates or political organizations may have had concerning running afoul of ELEC regulations will disappear and copious amounts of cash will flow freely into a system already awash in it..
-
In the swipe of his pen, Murphy wiped out some 80 percent of the complaints pending before the Commission by imposing a two-year limitation on investigations and applying it retroactively….Contribution limits will increase, pay to play laws will be gutted, and a housekeeping fund will be created to accept contributions with no oversight.”
-
Click Here to read the rest of Golden’s piece. Or go to the calmer but equally critical piece in last Thursday’s Globe Click Here. Teaneck Voices’ story in last week’s edition (Click Here) outlined many of the Act’s failures and predicted the 3/30 action by the Assembly would soon make the Act NJ law.
When essentially new information relevant to any policy decision suddenly emerges (i.e., this Election Transparency Act) , a competent legislative body (such as our new Council) will pause to make sure its meaning has been absorbed and integrated into its subsequent decisions.
Council, please Table this introduced 10-2023 ordinance until the new landscape of NJ’s ethics laws and institutions has been fully understood.
|