Jim McGreevey

By Steve Adubato, Ph.D.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column praising Governor Jon Corzine for implying that he was open to the idea of a modest increase in the gas tax. Even though Corzine made it clear during the gubernatorial campaign that he had no intent on raising the gas tax, I was impressed that he was open to the idea once he actually became governor and faced the stark fiscal realities of being our chief executive.

The Transportation Trust Fund created in 1984 (as a state legislator at the time, I was proud to vote in favor of the legislation creating the Trust Fund proposed by then governor Tom Kean) is the pot of money set aside to pay for road improvement and mass transit projects. It also deals with bridges in their continuing state of disrepair.

In response to my column, dozens of readers responded by saying how wrong I was. They questioned how I could praise Governor Corzine for "breaking a promise" that he appeared to make during the campaigning regarding NOT raising the gas tax. My logic at the time was that sometimes it is actually better to break promises if the promise you made was the wrong one to make in the first place.

Apparently the governor has heard from those same people and the countless legislators who are scared to death to have to vote on an increase in the gas tax. There will be no gas tax increase this year, nor will there be a gas tax increase next year. There is not going to be a gas tax increase for a long time in New Jersey. Some of you think that is good news, but let me tell you why it's not.

The new plan to put money into the Transportation Trust Fund so it doesn't go broke over the next few months is about refinancing debt. Nearly $2 billion in transportation bonds will be refinanced by the state. That's going to lower our annual debt payments by over $100 million. The refinancing plan is pretty simple. Instead of paying off the bonds in 20 years, which we are currently doing, we will be paying them off in 30. It's like refinancing your house with a 40 year mortgage instead of a 30 year mortgage.

But here is the catch. While you pay less each month, sooner or later that bill is going to come due, and when it does, all bets are off. Instead of a modest increase in the gas tax of about 3 cents per year over the next five years, the gas tax that will be necessary in 2011 will be closer to 50 cents per gallon. Call me naïve, but I just think that's wrong.

The bottom line is that we've known for years that the Trust Fund was running out of money. Refinancing the debt and borrowing more has been the norm for too long. Jim McGreevey knew the gas tax had to be raised, as did Christie Whitman, but neither one ever seriously tried to do it. They just borrowed more.

Some will say we've dodged a bullet because the gas tax increase is off the table, but I say we've just made a bad situation a hell of a lot worse. What message does it send to our children and those who look to us as adults to make responsible decisions about our finances? We tell our kids when they go away to college not to run up credit card debt that they can't afford to pay because the interest will build up and then they are going to be in trouble. We tell them it will hurt their credit record and saddle them with payments they are not going to be able to afford to make. We say they'll pay too much on interest and not enough on the principle. We tell them that they should pay as they go, or only buy what they can afford or need. But when the time comes for us to show that our actions match our rhetoric, we punt.

Every public opinion poll appears to show that voters in New Jersey are dead set against the gas tax increase. Clearly legislators on both sides of the aisle have read those poll results and have made it clear to the governor and his staff that they would never support any tax hike on gas. This, despite the fact that New Jersey has one of the lowest gas tax rates in the country and our gas prices are amongst the lowest in the nation.

This refinancing of the Transportation Trust Fund is being talked about as a "stopgap" measure. That implies that it is only temporary. But we've heard this so many times before. The problem is that this current temporary remedy follows other temporary measures by other governors and legislators who have refused to be responsible and face the fiscal music that has been at a crescendo for a long time now.

I say pay the debt now. Bite the bullet. Don't saddle our kids and their kids with gas tax hikes that they are not going to be able to afford. It's not fair. Then again, I'm not the governor. Nor am I still a legislator running for reelection next year. I'm only one guy with a column and a point of view who 22 years ago voted for the Transportation Trust Fund. At the time, the plan was to put money in the Fund as needed, with new revenue created by a gas tax. The plan was to limit borrowing and keep interest payments down. But that was 1984, which now seems like ancient history.

John Bennett first went to Trenton in 1979, when he won a State Assembly seat against Walter Kozkowski, a young three-term Democrat with serious health issues (he died three weeks after Bennett defeated him.) Over the next 24 years, Bennett won four more terms in the Assembly and then five terms in the State Senate with relative ease. If not for ethical questions raised after the Asbury Park Press discovered that he had overbilled the Township of Marlboro $4,000 in legal fees, Bennett would have been secure in his bid for re-election in 2003. Some observers believe that had Bennett not been forced to spend $1 million defending his own seat, the money would have helped George Geist overcome a 63 vote deficit against Democrat Frederick Madden in the fourth district -- keeping the Senate split at 20-20 for the next four years. When James E. McGreevey announced that his resignation the following summer, Bennett and Richard Codey would both have been in line to become Acting Governor.

GREGG: LARGER STATE WORK FORCE LEADS TO BLOATED STATE GOVERNMENT

Responding to an article in The Star-Ledger, Assemblyman Guy Gregg today said that he is not surprised, but still disheartened, to learn that the state's government work force grew significantly during the last four years.

If he hasn't done so already, Democratic Assemblyman Jefferson Van Drew is approaching Bill Hughes-like popularity in Deep South New Jersey -- a reference to the popular Congressman who beat an incumbent in the Watergate year of 1974 and, with relative ease, held a solidly Republican House seat for the next twenty years. Van Drew began his political career in 1991, winning a race for Dennis Township Committeeman as a Democrat in perhaps the most Republican year in modern New Jersey history. Three years later, in another Republican year, he was elected Cape May County Freeholder -- a rare victory for a Democrat. He gave up his Freeholder seat in 1997 to run for State Assembly and came within 1,811 votes of defeating GOP Assemblyman Nicholas Asselta. He ran for his old Freeholder seat in 2000, defeating Republican incumbent Mark Videtto.

Van Drew initially declined to run for the Legislature again in 2001. But with James E. McGreevey leading in the polls, Democrats sensed an opportunity for a win in the first district and convinced Van Drew to run. (Their candidate, Robert Balicki, dropped out of the race.) With McGreevey carrying the district by 4,546 votes over Bret Schundler, Van Drew defeated Republican Assemblyman Jack Gibson by a vote 1,204 margin. In that race, longtime Republican State Senator James Cafiero barely won re-election, finishing just 441 votes ahead of Bill Hughes, Jr., the son of the popular ex-Congressman.

When Cafiero retired in 2003, Van Drew passed on a State Senate race, ceding the seat to Asselta, who ran without opposition. He won re-election to the Assembly by 2,153 votes over Republican Andrew McCrosson, and finished 893 votes ahead of Gibson, who won Asselta's open seat. Republican hopes of beating Van Drew fell through by April of 2005, when McCrosson, who had been recruited to run again, forgot to file his nominating petitions. Republicans were unable to secure enough write-in votes to defeat a gadfly perennial candidate, George Cecola, in the GOP primary. Van Drew won a landslide re-election victory, outpolling Gibson by 16,057 votes and 25,043 votes ahead of Cecola. Van Drew's margin helped Democrat Nelson Albano easily defeat Gibson.

The problem for the 53-year-old Van Drew is where he goes from here. His ability to move up the political ladder is somewhat limited by the presence of two popular Republicans: Congressman Frank LoBiondo, 59, and Asselta, 54. There has been some talk of Van Drew running for Congress or State Senate, but many of the people who vote for him and organizations that support him are already in the LoBiondo and Asselta camps. Van Drew may have no choice to wait out a retirement, or in Asselta's case, an appointment to a pension-boosting job by a Democratic Governor. Trenton insiders do not view him as a likely candidate for leadership -- which means he probably won't be in line to serve as Assembly Speaker someday -- and while his electoral successes have won him wide respect from Democrats statewide, few party leaders consider him a prime contender for U.S. Senator, Governor, or even Lieutenant Governor. His geographic base -- Cape May and Cumberland counties -- make up about 2% of the votes cast in a statewide Democratic primary. Van Drew's friends say he clearly has a taste for higher office, but even for a strong vote-getter, his options may be limited.

Former James E. McGreevey spokesman Paul Aronsohn is quite clever. By delaying the official formation of an Aronsohn for Congress campaign committee until late December, he avoids having to disclose exactly how much money he has raised, and the identity of his donors, until April. On the record, Aronsohn cryptically claims to have raised between $120,000 and $130,000. He won't say how much he has spent (or on what) and he declines to reveal how much money he has on hand right now. Aronsohn's primary rival, '04 nominee Dorothea Anne Wolfe, dropped out of the race in late January -- largely because she didn't feel her own $86,000 warchest would be sufficient to wrestle the nomination from Aronsohn.

Before she dropped out of the race, Wolfe filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Aronsohn had spent more than the allowable $5,000 on his exploratory committee. Because Aronsohn has refused to release detailed campaign expenditures, a potential primary rival would have to wait until April -- after party organizations have selected their candidates -- to see if he spent more than the amount permitted. A Republican strategist told PoliticsNJ.com that it is unlikely that Aronsohn could have raised more than $100,000, set up a campaign website, hired consultants, and traveled numerous times to Washington for under $5,000.

While Aronsohn may be legally correct in his plan to spend a year "testing the waters" for a challenge to two-term Republican Congressman Scott Garrett, some pundits argue that the man who was the paid mouthpiece for the McGreevey administration -- it was Aronsohn who defended the hiring of Israeli poet Golan Cipel as the Governor's Homeland Security advisor -- lacks the luxury of playing cute with the facts. Aronsohn has argued that he was just following orders and that his defense of McGreevey and Cipel is not a reflection on him, although the claim that Aronsohn remains elusive with answers to reporter questions appears to be a valid complaint. One Trenton Democrat suggests that Aronsohn can help himself avoid references to his McGreevey media style by going out of his way to assure voters that he will not parse his words as a candidate for Congress.

State Senator Robert Martin last week acknowledged that he was arrested for drunk driving in March 2005 and lost his driving privileges for three months that year. Martin, a Law Professor and veteran Municipal Prosecutor, was able to keep his arrest and conviction quiet. Several Republican Senators and Morris GOP leaders said they knew nothing about Martin's legal woes until contacted by a Gannett newspaper reporter last week.

Martin announced last September, a month after the state restored his license to drive, that he would not seek re-election to the Senate in 2007. There had been rumors of Martin's pending retirement, although it was generally assumed that he wanted to avoid another difficult battle for the GOP nomination. Some insiders now speculate that his decision to retire was based on his desire to keep his DWI conviction out of the public domain.

The Gannett story came a week after Martin supported the nomination of Zulima Farber for state Attorney General, and defended her on questions related to her own driving record -- both in the Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor. He was one of four Republicans to vote yes on Farber's confirmation.

After eighteen years in a safe district, permitted to pursue his own agenda without the encumbrances of severe electoral politics, Martin was suddenly facing the political battle of his life to win renomination in the 2003 Republican primary. His challenger was 31-year-old Jay Webber, a conservative Harvard-educated lawyer who was Chief of Staff to Congressman William Martini.

Webber attacked Martin for using his campaign committee to pay nearly $40,000 in college tuition costs so that the Senator can receive a graduate degree in Education from Columbia University. Martin says, accurately, that the expense is a legal one, and that the knowledge he gains from the pursuit of his degree helps him to a better job as Co-Chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

Martin, considered to the left many of his Senate GOP colleagues, had been criticized in the primary for being too supportive of Governor James E. McGreevey's appointments. He voted with Senate Democrats on the nomination of Joseph Santiago as state Police Superintendent.

Normally it really isn't stop-the-presses kind of news when a candidate for public office throws dirt at the opponent. But when the guy throwing the dirt is Martin, who has built a reputation of tremendous integrity and independence during his nearly two decades in Trenton, it was a bit startling to realize that this honest man really isn't that much different than all the rest. Martin is perhaps nothing more than a run-of-the-mill politician in a highly volatile race -- willing to say whatever it takes in order to stay on as a Senator.

For Martin, who had allowed himself to be held to a higher standard than most other politicians, he was suddenly faced with the prospect of being judged by that standard. So his hard hitting campaign, which seemed to many observers to have distorted the record of his opponent, appeared incredibly out of character. At the time, PoliticsNJ.com said that Martin had mounted the most intellectually dishonest campaign of the year. This website dubbed him "Mr. Potato Head" (after the children's toy known for changeable facial features) for his ability to change his political face to meet the challenges of a more conservative primary electorate.

Martin has criticized Webber for accepting a Law Clerk position working for state Supreme Court Justice, Peter Verniero, saying that Webber should have tuned down the job because Verniero, as New Jersey Attorney General a few years earlier, had refused to defend the state's partial-birth abortion ban in a federal lawsuit, and criticized Webber because Verniero voted to allow Democrats to switch U.S. Senate candidates last October.

A tenured Law Professor at Seton Hall University, Martin probably knew better than to hold a Law Clerk responsible for the actions of the Judge they work for. Seton Hall works hard to push their students toward legal clerkships and wears it as a badge of honor when their alumni obtain them. And there's a little irony in this: Martin voted to confirm Verniero's appointment as Attorney General, and while he opposed Verniero's nomination to the top court, he voted to confirm six other Justices who voted exactly the way Verniero did on the U.S. Senate decision. In a 2003 e-mail to PoliticsNJ.com, one of Martin's students summed it up: "I felt a little betrayed. It certainly puts politics before his profession, an odd way to behave when you are a law professor."

The Martin campaign used direct mail and cable television ads to infer that Webber helped finance the re-election campaign of embattled U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli (who surely doesn't poll well among Republican primary voters in Morris County) last year because a political action committee run by some lawyers at the firm Webber works at gave money to the Democratic Senator. Martin's mail included a replica of a check showing Webber making a $1,000 contribution to Torricelli's campaign.

Was it fair to hold Webber, a second-year associate at a national 450-lawyer firm, responsible for campaign contributions made to Democratic candidates, including Torricelli, by the firm's PAC? Webber had no say over these contributions (Federal Election Commission reports do not list him as a contributor to the Drinker Biddle PAC). And Martin didn't point out that the Drinker Biddle PAC gave significantly more money to Republicans than Democrats in 2002, including monies to Republican Senate candidate Douglas Forrester and GOP Congressman Michael Ferguson, or that Webber worked on the Forrester campaign. Martin criticizes Webber for contributions made to Democrats over which he had no control, but says that his own 1995 campaign fund contribution to a Democratic Assemblyman (and fellow Seton Hall Professor) Wilfredo Caraballo is old news.

In a debate during the primary, Martin alleged that Webber hadn't paid property taxes on his Chatham home -- his campaign mocked up a check payable to the taxpayers for $0 and signed Webber's name. Webber was able to prove that Martin was wrong.

In some ways, Webber used Martin's reputation as a tool against him, hoping that 26th district Republicans would see that Martin's attacks are so out of character -- for Martin -- that they will view him as desperate. In reality, Martin's attacks on Webber would probably be judged tame in many other regions of the state. But the fact that Martin the Law Professor made the attack, heightened the political community's attention to the race, especially in gentlemanly Morris County.

Within a year, as the Daily Record's Fred Snowflack reported, Martin seemed like his old self at a the signing of the Highlands protection legislation. After winning the praise of Governor McGreevey (Martin, attacked in the primary for being "liberal like McGreevey," responded by his own sharp criticisms of the Governor), Martin had some rather harsh remarks for the Morris County GOP legislative delegation who opposed the Highlands plan: "I think they're knuckleheads," Martin said. Assemblyman Rick Merkt said that the GOP legislators weren't considered knuckleheads when they backed Martin over challenger Webber, and Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll told Snowflack: "There's always the possibility that maybe the rest of the world is sane and he's crazy."

From time to time, Martin had pursued moving on: he was mentioned as a candidate for Ramapo College President, and for state and federal judicial appointments.

It's tough to tell a Democrat from a Republican in Warren County these days, but it's clear that former Warren County Democratic Chairman (and Bob Torricelli campaign treasurer) Michael Perrucci is emerging as a significant power in solidly-Republican Warren County. A fledgling law firm, Florio Perrucci Steinhardt & Fader, includes: former Democratic Governor Jim Florio; current Warren County Republican Chairman (and Lopatcong Mayor) Douglas Steinhardt; Paul Fader, the ex-Mayor of Englewood who served as Chief Counsel to Governors James E. McGreevey and Richard Codey; and Bloomsbury Mayor Mark Peck, a former aide to Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll who ran for the GOP Assembly nomination in the 23rd district last year.

In a fortunate coincidence, Fader's new legal work reportedly includes a contact with the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which was approved by the Governor's office prior to Fader signing up with the firm. The Governor's office also signed off on the appointment of James Stettner as Chief of Security of the Delaware River Joint Toll Commission; Stettner is a Phillipsburg Councilman and was Council President when Perucci was named redeveloper for several parts of the town, including a brownfield site that had been set aside for the New Jersey Transportation Museum. The site was to be purchased with a combination of county funds and an $800,000 state Economic Development Fund grant approved a few years ago. The state has since backed off its funding commitment and Perucci is interested in developing riverfront condominiums instead. Fader has developed a certain affinity for Warren County over the last few years. He helped push through legislation that assured Warren would get two of the five Commissioner slots on the DRJTC. The commission recently purged some Republican appointees, including the wife of former Mercer County Executive Robert Prunetti. This has enhanced Perrucci's ability to deliver some jobs at the DRJTC. Steinhardt's father, Hackettstown (and Pohatcong) Municipal Court Judge Joseph Steinhardt, is reportedly Perrucci's choice to replace Robert Ellwood as the Phillipsburg Municipal Court Judge.

There are two candidates for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the fifth district, where GOP Congressman Scott Garrett is seeking re-election to a third term: Dorothea Anne Wolfe, a former Bergen County Improvement Authority Chairwoman who won 41% against Garrett in 2004, and Paul Aronsohn, a Public Affairs executive at Pfizer who served as Press Secretary to Governor James E. McGreevey. The likelihood that the Republicans will seek to exploit Aronsohn's connection to McGreevey is exactly why some Bergen Democratic officials are second guessing his candidacy. Both parties have suggested that his defense of Israeli poet Golan Cipel as the state Homeland Security advisor (Cipel "brings a wealth of experience to the job," Aronsohn said) will come up during the campaign, and Democrats, with a priority of re-electing County Executive Dennis McNerney in a potentially tough race against former gubernatorial candidate Todd Caliguire, are concerned that Cipel and McGreevey could become a local issue. As a result of working for McGreevey, Aronsohn has a further challenge of repairing strained relationships with the Trenton press corps.

But Aronsohn's key attribute, besides a resume that includes working for the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations, is his fundraising ability. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, ex-White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry and CNN host/Democratic strategist Paul Begala have all been helping Aronsohn raise money.

Wolfe has filed a complaint against Aronsohn with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that he failed to file campaign finance reports even though he has spent more than $5,000 exploring a potential House bid. Aronsohn says he will file as a candidate next week and believes he has followed the letter of the law. But as one Democratic elected official said, "Jim McGreevey's spokesman doesn't have the ability to parse words...he needs to follow the spirit of every law, not just the letter of it."

In Blue State New Jersey, Republican candidates for statewide office have not approached election day with approval ratings over 34% in the last five years. Quinnipiac University polling had Douglas Forrester at 32-25 on 11/2/05, Forrester at 34-25 on 10/23/02, Bret Schundler at 30-30 on 10/30/01, and Bob Franks at 34-16 on 11/6/00. In the '05 gubernatorial race, Jon Corzine's pre-election approvals were at 41-31; Frank Lautenberg was at 45-30 in 2002, and James E. McGreevey was at 41-24 in 2001. The last time a Republican won statewide in New Jersey was in 1997, when Christie Whitman's pre-election approvals were at 40-29 and McGreevey's were at 21-18.

New Jersey will have seven living former Governors when Jon Corzine takes office at today -- the most since Edward Edwards became Governor in 1920.

Update: Four of the seven attended Corzine' s inauguration -- Brendan Byrne, James Florio, Donald DiFrancesco and Richard Codey. Thomas Kean, Christine Todd Whitman and James E. McGreevey did not attend.