Assemblyman Sean T. Kean/732-974-0400
11th District - Monmouth County

It is a story that is becoming all too familiar in New Jersey. A public official uses his or her influence to enhance their personal income or to win favors for friends, family and political allies. After years of newspaper headlines reporting one scandal after another, perhaps the last few weeks shouldn’t surprise us.

First, Attorney General Zulima Farber was forced to resign her post after a special prosecutor found that she had violated state ethics laws by intervening in the motor vehicle stop of her boyfriend.

Next, Craig Callaway, president of the city council in Atlantic City, and former Camden city councilman Ali Sloan-El entered guilty pleas for bribery and extortion after being caught in an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

In early September federal investigators subpoenaed the records of a questionable rental deal between United States Senator Bob Menendez and a nonprofit agency in Union City that receives federal funding. The allegation is that Menendez may have helped steer federal funds to an agency from whom he was profiting.

Before the dust had settled from that report, former State Sen. John Lynch, a long-time power broker in the Democrat Party plead guilty to federal corruption charges ending an 18-month investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Finally, capping off this wave of corruption and scandal, a federal monitor issued a report alleging that State Senator Wayne Bryant pressured UMDNJ officials to create a no-show job allowing him to “lobby himself” for taxpayer funds.

The report went on to state that Bryant only appeared at work one day a week for about three hours, during which he primarily read the newspaper. Bryant “earned” a salary of $38,220 for this job.

But even if we have become so cynical that we are no longer shocked by these headlines, we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent in combating corruption.

The U.S. Attorney, Christopher Christie, must continue his excellent work pursuing and stamping out corruption. And our new Attorney General Stuart Rabner needs to join with Christie in those efforts.

Rabner has a reputation from his days in the U.S. Attorney’s Office as an individual who will pursue corruption, and I believe he will build on that reputation in his new post.

But the Legislature has a role to play as well. First, we must police our own house, and if members of the Legislature are caught violating the public trust, they should be removed from office.

Second, we must take action on dozens of ethics reform bills now pending in the Legislature. While all of these public officials, more than 80 in the past five years, are being indicted, many substantive ethics reform bills are gathering dust in Trenton.

After the recent wave of public corruption scandals, Assembly Republican legislators unveiled what we have called a Blueprint for a Corrupt-Free New Jersey and we have called for a voting session dedicated to considering these ethics reform bills.

Those bills would address issues such dual office holding, campaign finance reform, nepotism, public pension tacking and boosting, public official pension forfeiture, putting an independent public member in charge of the legislative ethics commission, and a streamlined ethics complaint process. I will be joining my Republican colleagues in sponsoring these reform bills.

A big component of the ethics problem is the way we finance our campaigns. The mad rush for campaign cash every two years leaves many legislators taking money from individuals pursuing an agenda in Trenton. The presence of big money in politics has an inherently corrupting influence.

I have sponsored several pieces of legislation dealing with campaign finance reforms. One bill would prohibit the making of loans to any candidate committee by certain persons who are the directors, officers, or employees of businesses prohibited from making contributions. This would close a glaring loophole in our campaign finance laws.

Another bill I have sponsored would establish a new standard and procedure for forfeiture of elective public office for accepting illegal contributions, making it easier to toss those who accept illegal contributions out of office.

These are just a few examples of legislative action we can take that would help put an end to the culture of corruption gripping Trenton.

Hopefully the Democrat leadership in Trenton that has been reluctant in the past to act on tough ethics reform legislation will look at the recent wave of scandals and realize it is time for action. It is time we act in a bipartisan manner to stamp out corruption once and for all.

New Jersey citizens, weary of these scandals, will demand nothing less.

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