Robert Singer

Menendez, Lautenberg, Pallone & Rothman Received Donations from ReGen Biologics, Pressured FDA to Approve Company’s Medical Device

Senator Robert Singer (R-30) urged Governor Jon Corzine to join his call for the United States Attorney’s Office to investigate shocking revelations that four New Jersey congressmen exerted pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to force the approval of a medical device after receiving campaign donations from several executives of ReGen Biologics, the producer of the device.

In a published report, the New York Times stated: “The agency has never before publicly questioned the process behind one of its approvals, never admitted that a regulatory decision was influenced by politics, and never accused a former commissioner of questionable conduct.”

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Senator Robert Singer (R-30) is drafting legislation that would require a physician who performs intravenous therapy to register with the Department of Health and Senior Services. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that medical practices that provide intravenous oncology and hematology therapies maintain uniform infection prevention and control procedures to ensure the health and safety of patients treated in a physician’s office. The bill is in response to the discovery of five people who had been infected with hepatitis B after receiving care at a local doctor’s office.

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Ocean County Democrats used Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie’s call to end dual office-holding to their advantage in that Republican machine controlled county.

Noting that state Sen. Robert Singer (R-Lakewood), Assemblyman Ronald Dancer (R-Plumsted) and County Clerk Carl Block – all Republicans – are each mayor of their hometowns, Democratic freeholder candidates Robert Bianchini and Michael Collins said that Christie should call on them to resign from their municipal positions.

All three Republicans are listed as supporters of Christie on his Web site.   

"I would expect that these two members of the State Legislature would immediately comply and then other Ocean County politicians holding two public offices like Mayor Block will follow their lead,” Collins said.  “Chris Christie says he would be able to pressure the Legislature to follow through on his policies as Governor, let's see him get his supporters to do it as a Candidate."

The number two man in the Senate Republican leadership today bashed GOP gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie's ethics reform proposals, saying they were overly simple and overstated the impact of dual office-holding.

Senate Minority Conference Leader Robert Singer (R-Lakewood) took exception to several of the proposals, but said that would not prevent his continued support of Christie.

"It's obvious he hasn't really checked these issues. For instance, he claims that legislators should vote on bills in which we have any private or financial interests. You cannot vote on something that affects your financial interest.  In fact, you never could," said Singer, who has served in the Senate since 1993.  "I think if this is his major issue and major platform, he's got a problem. I'm worried about the economy of the state, about people being out of jobs."

Singer is the mayor of Lakewood and draws down $5,000 a year as chairman of the town's Municipal Utilities Authority.  He would be directly affected by Christie's proposal to eliminate all dual office-holding, including for elected officials who were grandfathered in under the 2007 ban.

The veteran legislator said that he would not "vigorously oppose" legislation eliminating the grandfather clause, but said that there are so few dual office-holders in the state that they do not have a major impact.  Moreover, he said he benefited from his part-time position in his home town helps him connect with his constituents more than anything else he does.

"If you're telling me that the 16 dual officeholders in the legislature -- and there may not be that many -- are corrupting the whole system, shame on you," he said.

Edward Werner has filed a lawsuit against the state and Attorney General Anne Milgram, alleging that politics played a key role in his termination last year as Acting Executive Director of the Victims of Crime Compensation Office. 

Werner, whose eleven year old son was murdered in 1997, says that he was fired for seeking to eliminate waste in state agency that compensates the victims of violent crime and for moving to reform a system that permitted no-bid construction contracts.

He alleges that then-State Senate Majority Leader Bernard Kenny (D-Hoboken) pushed him to protect the job of Cathleen Russo Delanoy, a lawyer for the agency whose position could have been eliminated if legislation to reorganize the agency was approved.  Delanoy is the daughter of former Senate President John Russo and the sister-in-law of State Sen. Robert Singer (R-Lakewood).

When Marcia Karrow literally takes her seat in the State Senate, it will be in the back row of the chamber.  The seat set aside for her (Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr., who decides where Republicans sit can change his mind) is between two Ocean County Republicans, Christopher Connors and Andrew Ciesla, according to a seating chart provided by the Office of Legislative Services.  

One of the prime seats in the chamber, the aisle desk in the second row, behind Kean, has now been assigned to Robert Singer, a six-term Ocean County Republican who is the Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee.  That's the seat Leonard Lance, the former Minority Leader and the Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, occupied before his election to Congress.

Raymond Lesniak moved up to the Senate in 1983 after John Gregorio's criminal conviction.

After today's special election convention in District 23, a full one-quarter of the Senate will have entered the upper house by way of a special election: Raymond Lesniak (1983), Ronald Rice (1986), John Girgenti (1990), Robert Singer (1993), Thomas Kean, Jr. (2003), Paul Sarlo (2003), Loretta Weinberg (2005), Sandra Cunningham (2007), and James Beach (2009).  An eleventh Senator, Kevin O'Toole, initially served in the Senate in 2001 after winning a special election convention; he later returned to the Assembly and won a Senate seat in November 2007.

Lesniak replaced John Gregorio, who left the Senate following his criminal conviction.  Rice, Girgenti and Singer were elected following the deaths of Senators John Caufield, Frank Graves and John Dimon, respectively.  Kean took the seat of Richard Bagger, who resigned to concentrate on his career at Pfizer.  Sarlo became a Senator when the incumbent, Garry Furnari, was appointed to serve as a Superior Court Judge.  Weinberg won the seat of Byron Baer, who resigned for health reasons.  Cunningham replaced Joseph Doria, who resigned to become state Community Affairs Commissioner.  Beach, the most recent addition to the Senate won a special election convention after John Adler was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Senator Robert Singer (R-30) and Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean (R-21) sent a letter to Governor Jon Corzine today asking that he support an effort to hold hearings of the Senate Budget & Appropriations Committee to discuss the viability of conducting statewide property reassessments to reflect lower home valuations in property tax bills.

In response to dramatic drops in the prices of New Jersey homes, Senator Robert Singer (R-30) is calling for hearings of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee to discuss the possibility of a statewide reassessment of home values to ensure that property taxpayers don't pay more than they should. Singer noted that as home values have continued to slide, more and more people are successfully appealing their tax bills and having their assessed values reduced.

State Sen. Kip Bateman (R-Somerset) helped the former Somerset County Democratic Chairman win Senate confirmation as an Administrative Law Judge.

Ethics complaints he filed against seven Republican legislators in 2007 – all subsequently dismissed – came back to haunt former Somerset County Democratic Chairman Elia Pelios today, but with the help of a home county Republican it didn’t matter and the State Senate today confirmed his nomination as a state Administrative Law Judge.   Despite strong opposition from several key Republicans, including Joseph Kyrillos and Kevin O’Toole, Christopher Bateman, a Republican Senator from Somerset County, signed off on Pelios’ nomination and voted for his confirmation.