Dems to the GOP: 'You can't have it both ways'

In response to Republican criticism of the way Democrats ran theSenate President Richard Codey (D-Essex): Politicker file photo state Property Tax Assistance and Community Development account, Democratic Party Chairman Joe Cryan and state Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) tonight tried to staunch the bleeding.

The Democrats took a series of GOP hits this week in the aftermath of state budget officer George LeBlanc’s courtroom testimony that former Gov. Codey’s administration applied no oversight to the way the state distributed $40 million supposedly dedicated to property tax relief.

The Democrats argue that Republicans want to act holier than thou, while they were knee-deep in the same slush fund that Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R-Parsippany-Troy Hills) said was not a "merit-based, competitive grant awards system as claimed by the McGreevey and Codey administrations."

"Every grant from the program was approved by the Joint Budget and Oversight Committee (JBOC), which included Republican Senator Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) and Republican Assemblyman Joe Malone (R-Bordentown)," objected Cryan in a prepared statement. "Each member of JBOC had to approve the grants, a process that included notification and approval by Sen. Lance and Assemblyman Malone."

Assessing what they say was a fund that over two years added up to $128 million, Republicans say they wanted and requested JBOC meetings, however, the meetings did not take place after the majority party waited out the ten-day period deadline.

"Assemblyman Cryan is lying," DeCroce said in a statement. "We were sent notification that if the committee did not meet within ten days these grants would be automatically approved. Upon that notification, our Budget Officer, Assemblyman Joseph Malone, sent letters on two separate occasions to (former) Senator (Wayne) Bryant requesting that the committee meet specifically to review these grants. A meeting was never scheduled and we were never given the chance to vote against these grants. Assemblyman Cryan, as Democrat Party Chairman, should stop trying to cover this up and call on his party to come clean with the taxpayers.”

Cryan said Republican legislators made use of the same program to get grants for their districts during the years in question.

In years prior to the McGreevey administration, "Republicans operated the same way," said Codey.

"It still was not a good system," admitted the former governor, who served in 2004-05, and took credit for instituting reform measures that resulted in his successor, Gov. Jon Corzine, ultimately abolishing the program, acording to Cryan.

Before that happened, multiple Republican senators received grants for various projects in their respective districts. Codey said now they’re trying to act as though Democrats were the only ones tainted by what the senate president admitted was a flawed program.

Like Cryan, Codey said he is disturbed by what he sees as Republican hypocrisy, choosing the attacks his GOP rivals routinely level on Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) to make the point.

The GOP cites New Jersey’s last place finish among all states seeking federal funding, and finger Lautenberg as a heels dragging back-bencher whose feeble efforts, in their view, result in the state’s inability to land more funds.

But "You can’t have it both ways," said Codey. "You can’t say earmarks are bad and then complain if Lautenberg is not bringing home the bacon. You cannot complain then that New Jersey is last in getting money back from the federal government."

Still, the Republican case remains that Democrats responded in desultory fashion over GOP objections to reform a system that cloaked personalized money pots beneath the guise of a property tax relief program.

"This is about a slush fund that was purposefully kept essentially invisible to the public by the Democrats who used it as their personal bank account," said state Republican Chairman Tom Wilson. Codey conceded that the name of the program was not 100 percent accurate, but argued that one man’s pork is another community’s pride and joy.

Moreover, Republicans engaged in the same practice, he reiterated, and the monies distributed to build hospitals, libraries and to make other improvements in legislative districts resulted overall in minimizing what taxpayers would have paid for those same projects, Codey insisted.

"I understand that is not property tax relief in every case," the senate president said. "Somebody can make a reasonable case for that, but was it for a good cause, it was. That’s the bottom line."

Former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, a likely GOP candidate for governor next year, said total government transparency and substantial government reduction are the only solutions.

"Every penny that the government spends needs to be up on the Internet," said Lonegan. "The bottom line is the government has too much money, and in this case they had $40 million (for one fiscal year) to hack up among themselves. The numbers lose their meaning when they’re that big. You need to slash hard and deep through the wall of pork."