Lawmakers in Trenton
Are Drawn Into Inquiry
By DAVID W. CHEN and
RONALD SMOTHERS, NYTimes February 17, 2007
TRENTON, Feb. 16 -- The
leaders of the New Jersey Legislature said they were served with subpoenas
Friday afternoon by federal prosecutors as part of an expanding investigation
into corruption.
The subpoenas, which were delivered to Democrats and Republicans alike,
intensified a weeklong battle between the Legislature and the United States
attorney for New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie.
A spokesman for Mr. Christie declined to comment, but several lawmakers said the
subpoenas were related to expenditures that the Legislature had inserted into
the state budget since 2004, when the Democrats captured full control of the
State House. Those expenditures, known as “Christmas tree items,” are
often awarded with little review and in the middle of the night as legislators
rush each year to meet the budget deadline.
In separate statements issued hurriedly on Friday — after business hours and at
the start of a long holiday weekend — the two Democratic leaders, Senate
President Richard J. Codey and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., and their
Republican counterparts, Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance and Assembly
Minority Leader Alex DeCroce, vowed to comply.
“A subpoena from the U.S. attorney’s office was received by our office today,
and we obviously will cooperate with the U.S. attorney,” Mr. Roberts said.
“Corruption is not a partisan issue. If the U.S. attorney is going to
conduct an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing, it’s an inquiry that we
welcome and will assist in.”
In the longest statement of the four legislative leaders, Mr. Lance praised Mr.
Christie’s efforts.
“Since 2004 the budget process has become dysfunctional,” he said. “This
was particularly true last summer, when the state government shutdown was
prolonged for more than a day while at least $200 million worth of Christmas
tree items earmarked for Democratic districts were added to the budget.
“The Republican members of the Legislature demand immediate reform of the
process of adding legislative additions to the annual state budget,” the
statement said.
State House observers said they could not recall a United States attorney having
ever formally requested records from such a broad group of legislators.
It is unclear whether Friday’s subpoenas were connected to grand jury subpoenas
issued last week, which State House officials have said concerned State Senator
Wayne R. Bryant. Mr. Bryant, a Democrat from Camden County, was chairman
of the Budget and Appropriations Committee until he stepped down under pressure
from colleagues.
Those subpoenas were served on the Office of Legislative Services, the
nonpartisan research and legal arm of the Assembly and Senate.
That investigation, according to lawyers familiar with the case, may involve Mr.
Bryant’s legislative role as well as a $38,000-a-year job he held with the
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
It is believed that investigators are trying to determine whether Mr. Bryant
improperly steered millions of dollars in state grants to the university in
exchange for what a federal monitor says was virtually a nonexistent job.
On Wednesday, representatives of the Office of Legislative Services appeared in
a closed hearing before a federal judge to challenge its subpoena. They
are said to have contended that it violates the attorney-client privilege that
it says exists between the office and the lawmakers it serves.
At the time, Mr. Codey and Mr. Roberts sought to distance themselves from the
issues surrounding the subpoenas, saying that they did not know their contents.
But both men insisted that they did know that the scope was narrow and not
related to the entire Legislature or individual lawmakers.
An official with the Senate Democratic majority, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, did say recently that in about the last six weeks, Mr. Christie, a
Republican who has made official corruption his top priority, had sought and
received “budget-related” documents from the Senate majority office.
The subpoena served on the Office of Legislative Services generated a partisan
storm because the office’s executive director, Albert Porroni, and his staff
hired a private lawyer to argue their challenge.
Republicans charged that the challenge was a Democratic effort to block an
anticorruption investigation by Mr. Christie. So they sought to intervene
in the closed hearing on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Codey said that they would ask the judge to
allow a 16-member panel of legislators who oversee the Office of Legislative
Services to be included in the legal proceedings. That way, they said,
they would be able to know what was being sought.
Then on Friday, the second set of subpoenas was issued. Alan Rosenthal, a
professor of public policy at Rutgers, who specializes in legislatures, said:
“It seems to me that this is a pretty broad investigation into the activity of
the Legislature.”
He added that the process by which the so-called Christmas tree items are
included in the state budget may constitute bad public policy that has been
practiced by both parties for many years, and probably ought to be brought out
publicly. “But unless you can show that there is a quid pro quo, it is
very inferential,” he said.
Only a few Democratic and Republican lawmakers had gotten word of the subpoenas
by Friday night. But one Democratic legislator who spoke on condition of
anonymity said he was upset by the way the leadership had handled the situation.
“I find it stunning that the majority office is not on the phone with every
legislator; it’s beyond infuriating,” he said. “You want to pick up your
paper tomorrow morning and see that the paper has a story that says the majority
office got a subpoena, and you didn’t know?”
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