Ethically Challenged in NJ

You may be surprised to know that New Jersey has a Local Government Ethics Law. You may not be surprised that it is of little practical use as a deterrent for unethical behavior. Though it requires Financial Disclosure Statements when even the most obvious instances of malfeasance are uncovered it becomes more of an opportunity for soaking taxpayers and rewarding political insiders than punishing the guilty. For example, no matter how unethically you behave, there is this limit on penalties:

What Matters to NJSLOM Meeting Attendees

The New Jersey State League of Municipalities Annual Conference ends today and after looking over their sessions program and reading Governor Murphy’s lunch speech, I thought….
.

.

There was only one session having anything to do with the single biggest issue facing the state and it had to compete for attendees with the session on craft breweries.

Bailout Committee Election Results

Now that we have a  Democratic House of Representatives the chances are excellent for some sort of bailout of multiemployer plans to be legislated in the next Congress. That is, unless those Democrats on the bailout committee fared poorly in yesterday’s election thus sending some sort of message. Here are the committee members with results for those who had races:

Gubernatorial Results for Pensions

As a followup to the last blog about states where public pensions are something of an issue in the election for governor, here is how it turned out:

Gubernatorial Candidates On Pensions

P&I did a lengthy story* on states where public pensions are an issue in the election for governor. Here is a condensed summary of that story with relevant video where available:

Iowa Gubernatorial Debate on Pensions

In 2016 Governor Terry Branstad opened a debate over the future of public employees’ pensions in Iowa that went nowhere until it turned up as a scare tactic in this years’ final gubernatorial debate:
.

.
So how does IPERS look?

Pretty Low in NJ

John Reitmeyer of njspotlight hit it on the head during this week’s Reporters Roundtable program that otherwise examined in painful detail the Murphy campaign being a safe-haven for rapists and Menendez being accused by someone associated with the FBI* of vacationing in the Dominican Republic primarily for the underage prostitutes.
.

.
I would only note: