“Where is the county executive on this obvious boondoggle? Why didn’t he call a halt to the project and examine the costs?  Has he been influenced by the donations of Mr. Sanzari and PMK executives?” asked Yudin

SARLO STATEMENT ON FY 2010 ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION BUDGET

TRENTON – Senator Paul Sarlo, D-Bergen, Essex and Passaic, and Vice Chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, issued the following statement today regarding the Committee’s hearing on the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Budget for FY 2010:

“In the past few years, the DEP has established a number of programs – including permit extension and the licensed site remediation professional program – to make the State’s business climate friendlier without jeopardizing environmental quality. Particularly in this current economy, such actions to encourage business investment and speed up environmental clean-up of contaminated sites represent a welcome and needed culture change at the Department.

The legal defense team of former State Sen./plumbing consultant Joseph Coniglio (D-Paramus) has an interesting strategy to convince jurors that Coniglio is innocent:  they had two of Coniglio's former colleagues testify that he lacked the juice to deliver very much money from the state budget to his client, Hackensack University Medical Center.  Former Senate Majority Leader Bernard Kenny (D-Hoboken) told the jury that only the Governor, the Senate President and the Assembly Speaker actually have the power to deliver, while Senate Judiciary Chairman Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge) said that a legislative spreadsheet which credited Coniglio for some of the appropriations items was inaccurate, suggesting that others, including Sarlo, were really the ones responsible.

This is one of the reasons people think some politicians are tone deaf.  The Bergen County Utility Authority voted unanimously to give a no-bid consulting contract to Leonard Kaiser, who resigned as BCUA Executive Director last year after FBI agents searched his home.  Kaiser was a partner in a government grants business that led to the indictments of former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero and BCDO attorney Dennis Oury. 

Asked about the contract by The Record, BCUA Commissioner (and East Rutherford Mayor) James Cassella said: "Len has a lot of knowledge.  In fairness to Len, why not give him a little stipend?"

State Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge)

Passaic Democratic Committee Chairman John Currie’s decision to welcome three strikes and you’re out (Assembly, Congress, mayor) Republican candidate Jose Sandoval into the Democratic Party this afternoon triggered a curiosity wave in the city as Democrats wondered about Sandoval’s intentions.

The chief question was whether the real estate developer with a bug for politics and access to cash would turn around and run in the 36th Legislative District Democratic Primary against his former conqueror Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D-Passaic)?

Currie said he did not discuss that possibility with Sandoval.

“I first heard that he might do that on Friday night, but I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to,” said the party chairman. “All he told me is he’s bringing 1,000 of his people into our party, and if you ask me, that’s pretty positive. Anyone can challenge anyone at anytime. I told him you don’t really need me to change parties but if you want to do something publicly, that’s fine.”

Gov. Jon Corzine

HACKENSACK – It was a day of promise nearly two years ago that turned dismal fast, and in retrospect could be read as just one more stage in the unraveling of a party machine, whose new-look leader is now attempting to reverse months of bad news. 

On Thursday night, the Bergen County Democratic Organization (BCDO) overwhelmingly endorsed Jon Corzine for another term as governor, thereby kicking into motion the organization’s own official low-drama contribution to Corzine’s inaugural reelection effort. 

The governor appeared at the party's convention, and spoke in gratitude.

Bergen's unified front comes 23 months after Corzine attempted to make whole an organization at the brink of what was then yet another battle between state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) and BCDO Chairman Joseph Ferriero.   

On April 12, 2007, the governor arrived at BCDO headquarters, and like a benevolent chief summoned to witness the repairing of two nations, sat between Weinberg and Ferriero as the Bergen boss swore the war was over and promised not to run his ally, Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes, against the independent senator.

Gov. Jon Corzine, above, has reappointed three members of the New Jersey State Investment Council.

Gov. Jon Corzine has again nominated Jeanne Fox as President of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.  Fox had been reappointed last year, but the nomination stalled after then-Senate Judiciary Chairman John Adler (D-Cherry Hill) declined to post it for a committee vote.  Sources say that the new Judiciary Chairman, Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge) will back Fox for another term at the BPU.

Jose Claxton, Montgomery Cerf, and Erika Irish Brown have been reappointed by Corzine to the New Jersey State Investment Council, which has lost an estimated $25 billion of state pension funds since July.

Corzine has also resubmitted the nomination of Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney to the Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization and Consolidation Commission.  State Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R-Demarest) has been blocking McNerney's appointment.

Some insiders suspect there may be more to why Joel Brizzi backed down from an Assembly bid.

Blaming the economy and his need to pay his daughter's college tuition this fall, East Rutherford Councilman Joel Brizzi has changed his mind about running for State Assembly in the 36th district.  Some Republicans think there might be more to the story, suggesting that State Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge) might have helped alter the field.

Back in 2003, the GOP had recruited a fairly strong Assembly candidate to run with then-Minority Leader Paul DiGaetano: Anthony Scardino, a college professor from Lyndhurst whose father had served as a State Senator, Lyndhurst Mayor, and Executive Director of the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission.  But Scardino pulled out at the last minute - the word was that Bergen Democrats put some pressure on his father - leaving DiGaetano without the running mate he wanted.

Regardless of the outcome of the game of political musical chairs in the 28th legislative district, where two incumbents and a former Assemblyman are posturing for two spots on the Democratic line, look for the mostly white, blue collar towns of Belleville and Bloomfield to be split away from Newark and Irvington when a new map is drawn after next year's census.

The 28th was supposed to be one of the voting rights districts that protected minority representation in the Legislature when it was drawn in 2001.  The incumbents at the time were three African Americans: State Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Newark) and Assemblymen Donald Tucker (D-Newark) and Craig Stanley (D-Irvington). 

If Caputo holds his seat this year, it makes a defense of the current district under the Voting Rights Act more difficult.

Belleville, which was in the old 36th district, and Bloomfield, part of the old 34th district, were mostly represented by Republican legislators before the towns were moved in to the new 28th.  Rice beat GOP Assemblywoman Marion Crecco (R-Bloomfield) by a 69%-30% margin in 2001.

But Belleville and Bloomfield, which was estimated to have a combined population of 79,816 last year, have proven to be a greater force in Essex County politics than the redistricting commission imagined.  In 2007, Essex Democrats backed Ralph Caputo, a white Freeholder who served as a Republican Assemblyman from 1968 to 1972, to run for the Assembly.  Caputo and Cleopatra Tucker, whose late husband held the seat until his death in 2005, unseated two incumbents, Stanley and Oadline Truitt (D-Newark).