I have begun going around collecting signatures. This is one cause I'm willing to move for.

I think we should all sign Councilman Fulops pettitions when we see him and his supporters in the street collecting signitures. Remember you must be registered to vote for your signiture to count.

If you read the petition, you will find that it addresses your concern.

the whole problem is the grandfather clause which allowed these politicians to keep the office they were already elected and run for an additional one. don't see what good a petition will do at this point

Yes, there is something you can do. Help collect signatures for a petition on the November election ballot. For more info, look here:
http://www.betterjc.org/

CARIDAD RODRIGUEZ - Commissioner of Public Affairs for West New York, Assemblywoman of the 33rd district, formly forced by law to resign from being Rep. Albio Sires's office manager.


Something needs to be done about this because it's out of control in Hudson County. People like Nick Sacco, who is in fact a triple dipper cause his principal job, need to be given the option to ether choose Senate or Mayor. These HC Mayors and Councipeople are not giving others a chance.

Is there any group I can join or anything I can sign to help put a stop to this? Only if Corzine can do SOMETHING right during his term.

In other states it's a FEDERAL crime to have two elected offices, in NJ it's encouraged.

RETALIATE!

Double-dipping lives on in Hudson

Tuesday, March 25, 2008
By ROBERT SCHWANEBERG
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

When Gov. Jon Corzine signed a law in September banning state lawmakers from holding other elected posts such as mayors, freeholders or municipal council seats, 17 members of the state Legislature were dual office-holders.

Since then, the number of lawmakers with another elected job has actually increased - to 18, including four from Hudson County. And they can continue in both posts for as long as their constituents keep returning them to office.

The reasons: The law included a provision that "grandfathered" any lawmaker with another elected position as of Feb. 1, and more winning candidates in November's election opted to keep their other jobs despite the much-publicized effort to ban the practice.

"It's obvious that half-measures don't work," said Sen. Thomas Kean Jr., R-Union, who wanted a tougher ban. "It shows how weak and disingenuous the final bill was that the governor signed."

The bill Corzine signed in September was hailed as the beginning of the end for dual office-holding.

When Assemblyman and former Union Hill High School teacher Mims Hackett Jr., D-Orange, and Sen. Joseph V. Doria Jr., D-Bayonne, resigned soon after, it looked like the number of dual office-holders in the Legislature would dwindle.

But the freshman class of lawmakers that took office in January included more than a dozen with other posts.

Kean said dual office-holding "denies opportunities for more citizens to serve" and creates "a conflict of obligations."

Kean is sponsoring a bill to remove the grandfather exemption.

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HUDSON'S DUAL-OFFICE HOLDERS
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Hudson County is the most prolific county in terms of dual-office holding, with four of the 18 state legislators who currently have two elected posts.

RUBEN RAMOS - The Hoboken councilman who was first elected in 1999 got on the double-dipping gravy train just in time. He won election as assemblyman for the 33rd District in November and took office a month before the law took effect on Feb. 1.

ANTHONY CHIAPPONE - Bayonne councilman was elected to the Assembly in the 31st District last November just ahead of the law, but he may not be a double-dipper for long. Chiappone stated in November that his plan is to serve one term in the Assembly and run for mayor in 2010.

BRIAN STACK - The Union City mayor beat the clock, too, even though he held two elected positions when the law was passed. Stack, an assemblyman from 2004 to last year, won a state Senate seat in the 33rd District last November.

NICHOLAS SACCO - He's the longest-running double-dipper of the current crew. Sacco has been the North Bergen mayor since 1991 and snagged a second elected post in 1994 when he won election as state senator for the 32nd District.

RON ZEITLINGER

I heard this on WNYC's Brian Lear's show the other day:

Some Jersey Public Employees Hold Multiple Jobs to Boost Pensions

by Bob Hennelly

NEW YORK, NY September 01, 2006 ?New Jersey state legislators looking for ways to cut property taxes were told by state officials that thousands of public employees are boosting their pensions by holding as many as 11 different jobs simultaneously. WNYC's Bob Hennelly has more.

It gives a whole new meaning to the term ?double dipping.? State Pension Director Fred Beaver told the legislative panel that 5,OOO public employees were gaming the state's pension plan by working multiple part time jobs and racking up retirement credits for each one.

The state system, which covers government workers at all levels, permits participants to start accruing pension credits after they make as little as 1,5OO a year. A public employee can then stay on the pension roll for decades; and if they got a full time government job 3-years shy of retirement they get to collect a pension check for the rest of their life based on the higher salary.

New Jersey's public pension plan is currently underfunded by more than $18 billion. For years administrations from both parties did not pay into the system even as benefits were expanded.

http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/63876

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also see
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Cost of pensions for officials with multiple jobs to be addressed

8/24/2006 -- By TOM HESTER Jr.-- The Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) ? It is not unusual for elected officials in New Jersey to hold more than one government job, an arrangement that can substantially boost their publicly funded pensions. A recent analysis by The Associated Press found 49 of 120 state legislators earned income from more than one public job last year.

But exactly how much does such double-dipping actually cost the taxpayers? A special legislative committee looking to reform public employee benefits as a way to help cut property taxes is looking into it.

On Thursday, it was scheduled to hear from Frederick J. Beaver, the state's pensions and benefits division director. Committee member Sen. Ronald Rice, D-Essex, said he intended to ask Beaver how much taxpayers would save if pensions for elected officials were based on one job.

On Wednesday, Rice, who earned $135,000 last year as deputy Newark mayor and state senator, dismissed concerns about dual office holding, saying taxpayers would see no "substantial savings" if pensions were based on a single job.

"I get tired of it because it seems to be a jealousy issue more than an economic issue," Rice said.

The escalating cost of benefits for state, county and municipal government workers and school employees is among the factors seen as driving up property taxes, which have increased about 7 percent per year in recent years and now average about $6,000 per homeowner, twice the national average. State and local governments will pay about $1.75 billion this year to public worker pension funds.

Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole, R-Bergen, said he supports limiting pensions for elected officials.

"I just think this is pensions gone wild," said O'Toole, another committee member.

While the AP analysis found 49 of 120 state legislators earned money from more than one public job last year, Sen. Sharpe James left office as Newark mayor on July 1. However, Hunterdon County Freeholder Marcia Karrow joined the Assembly in January.

Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, recently became interim Woodbridge mayor, but is accepting neither pay nor benefits for that job.

Assemblywoman Amy Handlin, R-Monmouth, resigned as a county freeholder and Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck, R-Monmouth, resigned from the Red Bank council when they were elected last year to the Legislature.

Harvey Smith was mayor of Jersey City while holding on to his seat on the City Council. That seems to be an obvious conflict of interest. How can the Council and the Mayor debate over what's best for the city, when they are the same person?

I'm sure there are other examples of this practice in Jersey City. If we can't get Trenton to outlaw it, we should at least have a local law against it.

New Jersey leads nation in political double-dipping
Trenton Times - Monday, August 21, 2006

Among our unfortunate distinctions in New Jersey is that we lead the nation in political double-dipping.

No other state allows people to hold multiple taxpayer-funded jobs to the extent New Jersey does. Many states' constitutions or laws ban it. In Indiana, a person can go to prison for it. The federal government also forbids the practice.

But not New Jersey, where self-indulgence by politicians is a tradition. In 1962, in fact, the Legislature, worried that the courts would restrict double-dipping, enacted a law explicitly allowing it.

"One to a Customer: The Democratic Downsides of Dual Officeholding" is a new report co-sponsored by New Jersey Policy Perspective and written by public-policy expert Tom O'Neill of Pennington. It notes that 20 of New Jersey's 120 legislators (none are from Mercer County) hold local elective offices in addition to their $49,000-a-year part-time lawmakers' gigs. Another 19 legislators have appointive government jobs. The total doesn't include Sen. Sharpe James (D-Essex), who recently retired as the $184,410-a-year mayor of Newark, the state's largest city. Dual officeholding also is common at the county and municipal levels.

It's a bad deal for the public, for reasons that are spelled out in O'Neill's report.

Conflict of interest is built into the system. Mayors who double as legislators argue that by holding state office they can get the most in funds and favors for their towns, but often that comes at a cost to the other towns in their legislative districts, or the state as a whole, whose interests the lawmakers also are sworn to protect. In the case of James, he has used his leverage as a senator to bargain for special favors for Newark. According to O'Neill, James also invoked senatorial courtesy to block the appointment of an Essex County prosecutor he didn't want -- a prosecutor who would have been responsible for any possible legal investigations involving the mayor's administration.

Double-dippers are unlikely to be able to give sufficient time and attention to one or both of their public jobs. Assemblyman Charles Epps Jr. (D-Hudson), spends at least two days of most weeks at the State House, which is time when he's not back home superintending Jersey City's troubled school district, for which he receives $210,520 a year. In 2003, Assemblyman Ronald S. Dancer (R-Ocean) triple-dipped as a legislator, mayor and Ocean County employee.

It's hard enough for a challenger to unseat an incumbent in an election, but when the incumbent holds two elective jobs, he doubles the campaign advantage he enjoys in such areas as publicity, fundraising and staff assistance.

Multiple positions lead to padded public-funded pensions. For example, former Senate President John Bennett (R-Monmouth) qualified for an annual pension of $91,176, based on his 24 years in the Legislature and his salaries as attorney for several municipalities and school boards in his district.

There are some refreshing exceptions to the prevailing attitude. One freshman Assembly member, Amy Handlin (R-Monmouth), stepped down after 15 years as a county freeholder when she was elected to the Legislature last year, and another, Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth), resigned her seat on the Red Bank Borough Council. "You can't fully commit yourself to two elected positions," Beck told a reporter. "It's impossible to manage local priorities and larger responsibilities of a legislative district. In the end, somebody gets short-changed."

Not surprisingly, though, there's little enthusiasm in the Legislature for a ban on double-dipping. The fervor is limited to a familiar group of reform advocates, such as Assemblymen Bill Baroni (R-Mercer), and Michael Panter (D-Monmouth), who have sponsored bills to require legislators to shed their extra government jobs as soon as possible. Two years ago, when the Democratic-controlled Assembly made a start on restricting pay-to-play, it approved a bill calling for a study of multiple officeholding, a move that often is done at the State House to forestall action. But even a study was too much for the Senate Democrats, who buried the measure in committee.

Former Gov. Richard Codey, who still is president of the Senate, said the chances for passage of any kind of restriction on dual officeholding are "50-50." It will happen only if present beneficiaries are grandfathered, he said. That way, at best, it would take years to eliminate the practice.

"I've never subscribed to it," Codey said. "I think you're better off just concentrating on one job. But others say, 'If the voters choose that way, who are you to tell them they can't?' I've got running mates who are dual officeholders" -- Democrats Mims Hackett and John McKeon, the mayors of Orange and West Orange, respectively -- "and they do a great job as state Assembly people and as mayors. People would say, 'When they ran, it was well known that they would be dual officeholders. They won. People said it didn't bother them.'"

The "let the voters decide" argument is simplistic, however. Tom O'Neill points out that most dual officeholders come from safe, one-party districts, where incumbents lose mostly in primaries. As the number of such districts increases, "the elective offices are more insulated from active public accountability," O'Neill wrote. In a swing district, there's a better chance of getting a true test of public sentiment. A memorable instance in which dual officeholding became a campaign issue was in 1985, when the voters of the 14th District nearly denied popular Hamilton Mayor Jack Rafferty's bid for an Assembly seat because many of them disagreed with his announced plan to hold both jobs.

The only changes related to dual officeholding that appear to have a real chance of enactment are a requirement that double-dippers choose one job for calculating pensions and benefits and an end to pension eligibility by professional-service providers. These are part of the agenda of the Legislature's special session on tax reform. They also are the only aspect of double-dipping that seems to trouble Gov. Jon Corzine.

"That's something we clearly have to do. I think there will be reforms in that area," Codey said.

Contact George Amick at gamick@njtimes.com.