Two Republican state senators renew their call for immediate pension hearings by a bipartisan commission with the power to subpoena witnesses. New Jersey taxpayers, firefighter, teachers and public employees need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the same politically connected Wall Street financiers that preyed on New York and other state pension funds didn't exploit New Jersey's pension system as well.

There was a curious omission when the Legislature presented 98 proposals for lowering property taxes. It wasn't a new idea but it was an obvious one.

Thousands of dollars in local taxes are spent every year on legal notices. Every community is forced by law to buy advertising in local papers. The purpose is sound. The community needs to be informed of meetings, bankruptcies and other legal proceedings.

It's a remnant of a time when we wrote letters with quill pens and communicated with friends abroad by telegraph. The ads have the added disadvantage of being unreadable and inefficient but, curiously, they remain a part of every newspaper and a burden on every local town budget.

My former home in Bergen County is a great example. The number of homes that are Internet connected is overwhelming and rising. Subscription to the county's only newspaper, The Record, represents a minority and is falling. No commercial advertiser intending to reach Bergen County homes would choose to advertise exclusively in The Record. So, why are we mandating seventy communities to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on unreadable legal notices in The Record or even smaller shopper papers that lie discarded at the end of suburban driveways?