New Jersey Moves to
End Its
Dual-Office Tradition
By RONALD SMOTHERS,
NYTimes on the Web, May 27, 2007
TRENTON, May 25 -- Sometime
next month, the New Jersey Legislature is expected to end the state’s well-worn
-- some would say worn-out -- practice of holding more than one elective office
at a time.
The measure, which had been bottled up in the Senate, finally won the approval
of that body’s president, Richard J. Codey, last week, setting up a vote in the
Assembly, where it originated.
Its chances of passage are considered good, and there is little doubt that Gov.
Jon S. Corzine will sign it. He had told lawmakers that if they wanted his
help in grappling with property tax relief, they had to go along with him on
eliminating the dual-office tradition, a practice that feeds into New Jersey’s
reputation as an ethically challenged state.
“Dual office holding is a fundamental part of institutional arrangements in New
Jersey that create conflicts of obligations, erode accountability and promote
parochialism,” according to a 2006 report on the practice by New Jersey Policy
Perspective, a research organization, and Demos, a New York-based national
public policy group.
The ban would go into effect next February — after the elections this November,
when all 120 seats in the Legislature will be up for grabs. But those who
currently hold two offices would be grandfathered in, allowing them to keep both
jobs until they are voted out of one or the other.
Currently, 19 state lawmakers also hold elected municipal or county positions,
and 3 of them say they are retiring from the Legislature. The ban, in
time, also would apply to elected county officials who hold municipal offices.
There are 15 such officials now.
The ethical questions and potential for conflicts of interest when one person
holds two or more offices make the dual-office ban “a no-brainer,” said State
Senator Joseph M. Kyrillos Jr., a Republican from Monmouth County.
Most state constitutions explicitly ban the practice, while others — including
in New Jersey — fail to mention it at all, said Brenda Erickson, a researcher
with the National Conference of State Legislatures. Five states — Alabama,
Iowa, Maine, Mississippi and Nevada — explicitly permit politicians to hold dual
offices.
New Jersey has more dual officeholders than any of those states, said Alan
Rosenthal, a professor of political science at Rutgers University.
The boom in holding two offices at once was set off in 1962 by the State Supreme
Court, which, in two separate rulings, upheld three instances of dual office
holding at the municipal and county levels. Later that year, the
Legislature, in an effort to prevent other challenges to the practice, passed a
law embodying the rulings. But Gov. Richard J. Hughes vetoed the bill
because it included appointed positions under the dual-office protections.
“To the extent that the bill would validate the holding of more than one
elective office, I find it acceptable,” Governor Hughes wrote in his veto
message. “A person who holds elective office must periodically submit to
the people an accounting of his stewardship.”
The Legislature removed the provision concerning appointed positions, and the
amended measure became law in December 1962.
“No one will ever die from dual office holding,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “But
I don’t think that it is a good thing. The conflicts are subtle.”
He and others attributed the push for the ban to the fact that reporters are
paying more attention to lawmakers and that the public is more focused on ethics
and corruption than in the past. And then Governor Corzine weighed in.
“It had to come to a full boil before anything changed,” Senator Kyrillos said.
State Senator Joseph Doria, who is also the mayor of Bayonne, plans to retire
from the Legislature. He would not lose either job under the proposal’s
grandfather provisions, but, for the record, he said he did not favor the ban.
“I moved from the Legislature to the municipal post, and coming in I thought
that I knew everything about municipal government because I had been in the
Legislature,” he said. “Well, I didn’t. Now I have more of an
understanding, and I think it is good to have the ability to blend knowledge of
different levels of government.”
In 2004, Mr. Doria was sharply criticized because he wanted to receive a third
paycheck from the state as the president of Ramapo College. He ultimately
abandoned that plan, but not before Mr. Codey, who was acting governor at the
time, came out in support of Mr. Doria’s appetite for another state job.
Mr. Rosenthal said that there were a number of politicians in New Jersey who
graduated from local offices to the Legislature — bringing that expertise with
them — without holding on to their old jobs.
“I think for a lot of them it was a choice of convenience,” he said. “But
now the leaders of the Legislature want to do something to give the public some
confidence in the Legislature. It means now that one public office is
enough to focus on.”
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