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Last year, the New Jersey Legislature passed, with great fanfare and trumpets of reform, a ban on the practice of dual office holding. This stinking practice has, inexplicably, to most commoners in NJ, allowed, say, a state assemblyman or state senator to simultaneously serve both in the state legislature and as a local mayor, or councilperson, or freeholder, or perhaps even more notoriously, as a municipal lawyer or city solicitor.
What most commoners in New Jersey probably do not know is that more state legislators are now serving in dual capacities than before the law was passed due to a "grandfather clause," laughably, stuck in the bill before last November's elections when nearly the entire legislature was up for re-election.
Many people have rightly condemned the practice as the clear conflict of interest that it is, despite the smug dismissals or the very officeholders who serve two or more constituencies while neglecting the public interest.
This law should never have been enacted with a clause to grandfather in legislators running for re-election to seal their dual offices. It is laughable, contemptible, and a betrayal of the public trust.
In these tough fiscal times, citizens have regularly cited their contempt for ordinary state, county, and municipal workers who work hard every day to keep the wheels of government turning: garbage men who remove waste, clerks who make licenses, technicians who monitor our air quality, etc.
That contempt is misplaced. It ought instead be directed at the public prostitutes who pimp themselves out to the highest bidder in two or more dual roles as elected or appointed officials. These political welfare cases are sucking the blood out of the state pension and benefits systems and giving ordinary government employees, who work hard, a bad name.
Ban dual office holding! Do it now. And don't permit any grandfather clauses to seal in politicos in cushy jobs they don't deserve and can't possibly serve in an impartial, fair, and respectable manner.
