Conflicts of Interest, - Public Officials Cashing In, - Level The Electoral Playing Field, - Promote Democracy in Political Process

Official corruption is sufficiently widespread among New Jersey’s elected and appointed officials that the state’s national reputation has suffered, and 92 percent of citizens believe it is a serious problem in both political parties.

PROBLEM:Conflicts of interest and the influence of money on campaigns and government are too often hidden from public view.
SOLUTION:End dual office holding, and require elected officials, political candidates and political action committees to list campaign contributions on a state website within 24 hours of receipt.

Read the Indepth Policy on CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

PROBLEM:Too many elected and appointed public officials are cashing in on their positions.
SOLUTION:Abolish pensions and health care benefits for part-time legislators, aides and political appointees; base pensions on 10-year average salaries; place a three-year lobbying and government contract ban on elected officials; and require legislators who receive two public salaries to have their pay reduced on a per diem basis in their fulltime job for days spent in Trenton on legislative business.

Read the Indepth Policy on PUBLIC OFFICIALS CASHING IN

PROBLEM:High political office too often goes to the highest bidder; we should level the playing field for candidates competing against multi-millionaires.
SOLUTION:Impose a “luxury tax” on political candidates who spend more than twice the public financing limit in gubernatorial elections, with 33 percent of the excess to be shared among rival candidates in proportion to the amount of money they have raised.

Read the Indepth Policy on LEVEL THE ELECTORAL PLAYING FIELD

PROBLEM:The electoral process is far too heavily weighted in favor of the Democratic and Republican parties.
SOLUTION:Limit contributions to legislative leadership, state party and county party political action committees to the same maximum as can be given to individual candidates; end “wheeling” by political action committees; add “competitiveness” as a criterion in legislative and congressional redistricting; extend the requirement for posting board and commission openings from municipalities to states and counties, and require municipal political organizations to join counties in adopting by-laws that promote democratic participation by interested citizens.

Read the Indepth Policy on PROMOTE DEMOCRACY IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS

Eliminate and Expose Conflicts of Interest

We should end dual officeholding because elected officials cannot simultaneously represent two sets of constituents. It is a built-in conflict of interest. A legislator who is a mayor is not representing the interests of all the citizens of his district when he seeks special treatment for his city, but he is not doing his job as mayor if he puts the overall interest of the district and the state first.

We should make the impact of campaign contributions on both governing and the election process as transparent as possible by requiring all contributions to elected officials, candidates, party organizations and other PACs to be posted online within 24 hours on a site set up by the state Election Law Enforcement Commission

Conflicts of Interest, - Public Officials Cashing In, - Level The Electoral Playing Field, - Promote Democracy in Political Process

Prevent Public Officials from Cashing In

We should put an end to pensions and free health care for part-time legislators, part-time legislative aides and other political appointees. Too often, part-time legislators and political appointees get rewarded by their parties in the last three years of employment with a six-figure salary that triggers a pension that’s twice as high as many full time public employees with 30 years of service. Pensions for fulltime employees are vested after 10 years; we should, therefore, base pension levels on an average of 10 years of salaries.

Legislators who receive two public salaries should have their salaries reduced on a per diem basis by their other public sector employer for the full days they put in at the Statehouse.

We should place a three-year ban on elected officials engaging in lobbying or obtaining government contracts after leaving office.

We should also require public notice and public bidding on legal and professional services contracts.

Conflicts of Interest, - Public Officials Cashing In, - Level The Electoral Playing Field, - Promote Democracy in Political Process

Level the Playing Field for Candidates Competing Against Multi-Millionaires

Jon Corzine is not the only example of a multi-millionaire buying an elected office, but the $60 million of his own money he spent to win the 2000 U.S. Senate race and the $40 million he spent to win the governorship in 2005 makes him the one of the most egregious examples. Public financing of political campaigns, which was pioneered as a post-Watergate reform in New Jersey by former Gov. Brendan T. Byrne, was set up to encourage competition and to give good candidates a chance to run for high office. While the United States Supreme Court has ruled that contribution limits are constitutional, its ruling in Buckley v. Valeo that equates campaign spending with free speech makes it possible for wealthy individuals to contribute unlimited amounts to their own campaigns and for the parties in power to spend as much as they can raise, often from those who have profited or expect to profit from party control.

New Jersey and the nation need to find a way to prove that high political office is not for sale. We believe it may very well be constitutional to impose a “luxury tax” on campaign expenditures above a certain level, similar to the way Major League Baseball imposes a “luxury tax” that requires wealthy ball clubs with payrolls above a certain level to contribute to less well-funded teams in the interest of sustaining competition. Why should an election for governor be more one-sided than a baseball pennant race?

We would suggest that a “luxury tax” of 33 percent kick in at two times the public financing limit, with the receipts going to other candidates in the race proportionate to the amounts they have raised. This would enable the self-funded multi-millionaire or the party in power to continue to outspend its opponents by a 2-to-1 margin, but it would reduce the incentive for candidates and parties to spend above that level, knowing that part of the money raised would help their opponents get out their messages.

We believe this approach, if it passes constitutional muster, could serve as a national model for presidential campaigns, gubernatorial campaigns in other states, and particularly for the United States Senate, which has rightly been labeled a “millionaire’s club.”

High political office should be a privilege that is earned at the polls, not purchased by the candidate with the biggest bank account.

Conflicts of Interest, - Public Officials Cashing In, - Level The Electoral Playing Field, - Promote Democracy in Political Process

Promote Democracy in the Electoral and Political Process

We should limit the impact of the legislative leadership political action committees (PACs) and the state and county party PACs by establishing the same campaign contribution limits for those organizations as for individual candidates. This would help restore the independence of the legislature by reducing the ability of legislative leaders to blackmail individual lawmakers by threatening to withhold their large campaign warchests from their re-election campaigns. Furthermore, establishing lower contribution limits would make it more difficult for multi-millionaires like Jon Corzine to purchase county party organization support, as he did in 1999 and 2000 by pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in $25,000 checks into the coffers of the party bosses he would be asking to support his primary bid for U.S. Senate.

We should simultaneously put an end to the practice of “wheeling” contributions from political action committee to political action committee, which is one of the main tactics that party bosses and big donors use to circumvent contribution limits.

We should support efforts to encourage interested citizens to participate in both government and politics. Accordingly, we support efforts by the Citizen’s Campaign and its leader, Harry Pozycki, to extend the Citizen Service Act requiring the creation of a directory of openings on municipal commissions and boards to state and county government, and to expand the Party Democracy Act to require municipal party organizations to join county parties in adopting by-laws that further the democratic rights of citizens to participate in the process of making endorsements, selecting candidates to fill vacancies and adopting party platforms

Finally, we should join states like Arizona and Iowa in adding competitiveness as a criterion for New Jersey’s legislative and congressional redistricting commissions to consider in the remapping process that will follow the 2010 Census. It is a travesty of democracy that so few legislative and congressional races are truly competitive.

Conflicts of Interest, - Public Officials Cashing In, - Level The Electoral Playing Field, - Promote Democracy in Political Process