Two weeks ago, Christopher J. Christie promised to convert the closed caucus room of Trenton into a temple of transparency.
The public deserves a more detailed, warts-and-all accounting of a public official's personal income and interests, he said. Current disclosure rules are a "joke" that provide only a superficial summary.
"If you look at the one that I had to fill out as a federal official, it will give you a headache," Christie said, referring to his tenure as U.S. attorney for New Jersey. "I would rather give public officials a headache … than to continue to use an ill-advised, narrow form that does not give you the information you need to judge whether or not a public official is acting in his or her own interest or in the public interest."
Christie is now the one with a throbbing headache for failing to practice what he preaches.
The Republican nominee for governor was on the defensive this week following revelations that he omitted a $46,000 loan to a former subordinate, Michele Brown, on his tax returns and federal and state disclosure forms.
Swamped by questions about the legal and ethical consequences about the loan, Christie, the fiery ethics crusader, was suddenly the contrite candidate dispensing damage control. He vowed to amend those returns to reflect the 2007 loan.
"It was an oversight," said Christie. "My mistake."
Let's put aside, for now, the glaring conflict of interest of possibly having Brown, the first assistant U.S. attorney in Newark, repaying the governor a loan at 5.5 percent interest. And we need not dwell too much on the Corzine-esque nature of the loan — sorting the differences and similarities between Corzine's $470,000 loan to ex-girlfriend and union leader Carla Katz and the Christie-Brown loan doesn't offer much insight into Christie's decision.
What I find most puzzling is that Christie's "oversight" is at odds with his experience as a corruption fighter. He should have known better.
Perhaps more than any other federal prosecutor who preceded him, Christie demonstrated how New Jersey's toothless disclosure laws foster corruption. It was a common theme in his indictments and convictions.
Former Paramus Democratic state Sen. Joseph Coniglio was convicted in June on charges that he was hired by Hackensack University Medical Center as a $5,000-a-month lobbyist and concealing his interest in a consulting company. State disclosure laws did not require him to disclose that he was working for the hospital.
It was Christie who prosecuted former state Sen. John Lynch, the longtime Middlesex County Democratic power broker for secretly taking tens of thousands of dollars from a contractor while lobbying to help him develop state parkland.
Dennis Oury, a Bergen County Democratic Party lawyer, was charged last year with failing to properly disclose his interest in a grant-writing firm that was receiving public funds. Oury is awaiting trial this fall.
If Christie was truly concerned about the pernicious dangers of poor disclosure, he should have set an example by reporting the loan two years ago instead of explaining himself amid a political firestorm.
"I never thought of it as an asset," Christie said of the loan to Brown and her husband, Michael, who had lost his sales job and was facing mounting credit-card debt. "I saw it as money we loaned to friends who were in financial trouble and they were paying us back."....
Read More >>> Here
No comments:
Post a Comment