Corzine swoops into Monmouth and assures local leaders he has heard them on COAH

MARLBORO – In this Monmouth County political hotbed where officials now shoulder a new era and try to salvage their town from those years that left several real estate finagling electeds behind bars and a built-out wreck in the wake of their corrupt handiwork, Gov. Jon Corzine this evening supported Mayor Jon Hornik’s efforts to create a coalition of 22 local suburban governments dedicated to pursuing tax saving shared services.

Here to kick off the formation of the Central Jersey Council of Governments (CJCOG), there festered, of course, some pent up party rivalry in an ostensibly smiling and bipartisan Town Hall crowd, which included Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-Little Silver) and Manalapan Township Committeewoman Michelle Roth. 

O’Scanlon and his Republican running mate, Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande (R-Colts Neck), intend to fend off a 12th District Democratic challenge from Roth and her running mate, teacher John Amberg of Tinton Falls. Roth and Amberg listened as O’Scanlon graciously blunted any GOP discomfort in the presence of a gubernatorial-election-year governor when he told the visitor from Trenton, “You have been very supportive of shared services, and we look forward to working with you as we go forward.”

Later, O’Scanlon and Roth sat onstage with Corzine and Hornik.

This setting of Marlboro – home to the 12th District’s largest concentration of voters among its 16 suburban towns - inevitably induces the subject of the town’s affordable housing obligation under a court-ordered state mandate. 

The provisions of the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) require Marlboro to build 1,600 homes in a town already bulging from overdevelopment, a condition that’s prompted Hornik more than once to call on Corzine to issue an executive order eliminating COAH. 

If a lineup of Republican candidates for governor has wielded all manner of metaphor to describe what they intend to do to COAH if elected, Hornik tonight was able to coax out of Corzine a solemn, “I heard your COAH plea.” 

Hardly the size of Assemblyman Richard Merkt’s (R-Mendham) “I will drive a stake through COAH’s heart, bury it, and make sure it never rises again” in this town where the mayor and council have weathered a barrage of public meeting abuse on the issue and Hornik in return has deluged the governor’s office and state Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) with requests to intervene, Corzine’s terse statement nonetheless came as reassurance to Democrats who fear their association with the COAH-championing gov will bury them politically. 

In Hornik’s words: “If you don’t kill COAH, it will kill my town.”

“I don’t always agree with the governor,” the mayor added in the public portion of tonight’s meeting, “particularly when it comes to COAH, but I respect this governor for providing strong leadership in the difficult times. That, my friends, is character.”

Lending his imprimatur to the CJCOG if not to the notion that he will rid the town of COAH, Corzine praised the bipartisan efforts of those in the room, most of whom were Republicans.

“If I’ve got that right, this is the single largest effort – regionalized shared services effort – in the state,” said the governor. “You have the right idea: maintain the specialness of towns we are part of, but look for those economies of scale you’re all responsible for.”

He fielded some local backlash, none of it especially angry.

Colts Neck Mayor Benjamin T. Forester hit the district buzzword when he told Corzine, “You’ve got to do something about COAH,” and added, “And the wages for public employees have gotten way out of hand and are far greater than what they are for most in the private sector.”

But on a day in which public employees staged protests statewide in an effort to back the governor down from his own cost savings proposal of state worker furloughs and wage freezes, he wasn't going to get out of Marlboro without catching flak from the other side.

As he tried to pull away from Town Hall in a two-car sport utility vehicle caravan, a small group of public employees tried to force a confrontation and Corzine went over to talk to them one-on-one.