November Elections for Assembly and Governor Key

New Jersey Currents|Online, Summer 2009 - Update

At its current pace, the 2008-2009 New Jersey Legislature will go down as the worst environmentally in at least in modern history. Several major bills that rollback key protections have sailed through the legislature while the few positive bills that moved were comparatively less significant and even they had to be weakened to become viable.

Polluters, assisted by too many members of the New Jersey Legislature and Corzine Administration, have used the cover of the recession to hide their real motive to get around environmental and public health protections. Efforts to provide comparable economic stimulus while respecting other societal needs were repeatedly, summarily rejected.

As a result, more taxpayer funds already in short supply may now be used to subsidize development of greenfields, polluters will give final approval to most of their own clean-ups, and projects that fail to meet modern safeguards have been brought back to life.

The past two years have seen budget cuts comparable to the worst of the 1990's. Modest bills to regulate illegal off-road vehicles in state parks, promote better stewardship of taxpayer-supported forests, and update building codes to combat global warming all had to be watered down to advance. And risky, short-term stop gaps trumped securing long-term, significant funding for open space preservation.

This session so far trumps the 2004-5 one that passed the infamous fast track law because that bill was offset by the Highlands Act and successful efforts after the fact to stifle fast track. It's worse than any of the 1990's sessions that had comparable budget cuts, economic downturns, and environmental scapegoating as those efforts rarely became law or were weakened and more narrow in scope.

Perhaps most telling about the current predicament, unlike past attacks, is the lack of any significant opposition from any legislator from either party. Such opposition was critical in the past to stopping rollbacks and securing new protections, e.g., 1996 constitutional dedication of 4% of the corporate business tax for a variety of environmental programs.

However, there is light at the end of this tunnel! First, the Legislature is in recess until after the November election so more damage can't be done for now. Second, the Legislature can repent during the lame duck session this winter. Finally, there are elections in November. The entire Assembly is up this year and needs to be held accountable.

In the Governor's race, besides the major party candidates, Governor Corzine and Chris Christie, there's an independent candidate running, Chris Daggett, a former high level US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) official and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) commissioner. He has over $1 million in campaign funds having qualified for public matching funds, is shooting up in the polls, will be in the debates, and his presence coupled with the economy, climate change, and energy crisis is elevating the environment in this race. The three candidates between them held 5 press conferences on green energy between July 6-8!

NJEF will be very involved in this year's elections and we urge you to as well - stay tuned!