NJ Assemblyman Larry Chatzidakis has introduced a bill to eliminate the NJ Department of State [link]. The move would save bundle of money, since the department has $75 million budget.

Chatzidakis probably feels that most of New Jersey wouldn’t even notice that the department was gone. He proposes transferring the department’s duties to the Departments of Education and Community Affairs. Sounds good to me.

The only losers? NJ Secretary of State Regena Thomas would have to find another full-time gig. That doesn’t seem to difficult for the politically connected democrat consulant. Perhaps her old boss, Senator Jon Corzine, can rehire her to rally the troops and voters nearing election day??

The Asbury Park Press has its opinion on the Secretary of State, “The secretary must go.”

Oh, and the only other losers will be the three staff photographers employed by the Department of State, who will probably have trouble find jobs as generous as they had while working for Ms. Thomas. She had three photographers on her payroll, taking in over $200,000 in salary and with no clear job description.

RedState.org, a fantastic group blog covering politics with unabashed conservative spin, has a diary section that promises to feature commentary on the upcoming NJ govenor’s race. So if you can’t get enough from DynamoBuzz, click on over to RedState.

The latest Quinnipiac University Poll shows Doug Forrester leading Bret Schundler by 3%, 36% to 33%, in a survey of New Jersey republican voters. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 5%, so it’s not a statistically significant difference [link].

Bad news for democrat senator Jon Corzine, whose lead over Forrester and Schundler is less than what it was in previous polls. Matched up against Forrester, Corzine leads by only 10% (46% to 36%) and against Schundler the race is 47% to 33%. The last Quinnipiac poll had Corzine up by 17% over Forrester and 16% over Schundler.

The situation is fluid amongst republican voters. A whopping 61% said they could still change their mind between now and the June primary, and 40% said they didn’t know enough about Schundler and Forrester to make a decision. That’s pretty amazing considering the republicans polled were considered likely primary voters who typically are much more politically aware. This reflects the general lackluster GOP primary to date with probably a bit of voter apathy.

Disgraced ex-governor Jim McGreevey has resigned from his position at NJ lawfirm Weiner Lesniak after questions were raised about conflicts of interest [link] and [link]. One of McGreevey’s first assignments at the law firm was representing the developers of the huge Meadowlands entertainment complex, and this sort of looks bad considering the firm got the contract from the McGreevey administration. The controversial Meadowlands project, named “Xanadu”, is worth an estimated $1.3 billion, and given that this is New Jersey, the actual dollar figure will probably be much higher.

NJ state ethics guidelines prohibit ex-state officials from working with companies they had been “substantially and directly” involved in as a “state officer” but it appears the law doesn’t apply to ex-governors. Acting governor Richard Codey said he was going to close the loophole immediately via executive order.

McGreevey resigned from the lawfirm, saying he wanted “..to ensure compliance with both the letter and spirit of acting Governor Codey’s pending action.” One of the partners in the law firm is state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, one of McGreevey’s few friends that didn’t abandon him during the bleak final days of office.

Good to see that McGreevey has developed a respect for both the letter and spirit of the law, something he was lacking during his three years in office.

Tragedy hit the DynamoBuzz household last week when our pet rabbit, Honey Bunny, went to bunny heaven. He was almost 8 years old, which I think is pretty old for pet rabbits. He had lost a lot of weight over the winter and he never gained it back even though I tried varying his diet with more fruits and stuff and buying different brands of rabbit feed.

My wife was able to find someone in our town who was giving away bunnies, and we picked up a new one tonight. It’s a lionhead rabbit, a breed I had never heard of. They are small bunnies with a mane of fur around their heads like a lion. The lady who was giving away the bunnies said the lionhead rabbits have only recently become popular in the US but they are still hard to find. I took Daniel and Allison with me to look at the bunnies and they picked a dark grey one. Daniel gets to pick the name.

We brought her home a few hours ago and let her sit in the living room a bit before putting her in the hutch in our patio. She’s much calmer than Honey Bunny who we very rarely let run around our living room because he would instantly run behind the sofa.

Enlighten-NewJersey has the details of the latest legal moves by GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester. We have just gone through a lengthy county by county nominating process, and Mr. Forrester “won” 15 of 21 county votes along with the corresponding top of the ballot position as official republican candidate. Forrester has decided that he should be on top of the ballot in every county and has gone to court. His particular gripe is with Bergen County, but the suit would be statewide. In effect, Forrester is suing the state and county republican parties.

Perhaps Forrester thinks the courts owe him a favor after they screwed him in 2002 by allowing the democrats to do the Torricelli-Lautenberg switcheroo weeks before the election. This appears to be a desperation move by a candidate who’s trying to portray himself as the favorite and clear front runner for the governor’s job. The suit will probably be tossed, and Forrester comes across as a whiner. Not a smart move.

The scandals involving the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey are starting to grow into possible criminal actions. The Bergen Record, a paper that is no member of the vast right wing conspiracy, has come out in favor of a far reaching investigation. In an editorial, “Big mess at UMDNJ“, they call the situation “a festering boil” (yuck!) and call for a delay in the inauguration of the new university president due to questions about his hiring.

The editorial is a good summary of the questionable and possibly criminal conduct at UMDNJ since the McGreevey administration:

• $125 million in no-bid contracts since 2002, including almost a million in no-bid lobbyist fees.
• Creating a $156,000 position and giving it to a lobbyist, Christy Davis-Jackson. Ms. Jackson is married to Rev. Reginald Jackson, director the Black Ministers’ Council of New Jersey. Jackson, a former aide to Jon Corzine, did not disclose her lobbying.
• Signing a McGreevey fundraiser to a $75,000 consulting contract during the months between McGreevey’s election and his inauguration. He apparently did no work for the money. The fundraiser was on trial for federal charges but he died before the trial concluded.

There’s more, and the State Commission of Investigation has it’s hands full. The SCI is investigating all NJ colleges, and has requested officials at Rowan University to turn over financial records from the past four years [link]. The SCI is interested in Rowan’s lobbying and consulting contracts, donations and grants. Supposedly Rutgers and NJIT have also been contacted.

You and I look at colleges and universities and see institutions of higher learning. The state democrat party sees patronage mills and an extension of the government spoils system. If you remember, Codey and McGreevey were pushing really hard for Ramapo College to hire Bayonne mayor and state senator Joe Doria as university president. The selection committee showed a lot of backbone to deny the job to the politically connected democrat. And Democrat senator Wayne Bryant receives $35,000 a year from UMDNJ as a part-time employee, plus Rutgers pays him another $30,000 as a guest lecturer. Yeah, I’m sure it’s all “perfectly legal” but that’s for the SCI to determine. Stay tuned.

New Jersey news has been dominated the past few weeks with a bunch of stories that if taken one at a time would each only be a small blip on the radar. But when you step back and take a look, these scandals paint a picture of a state awash in corruption, incompetence and campaign finance shenanigans. This is what happens in state government when a single party dominates state and county political offices. If these stories keep on coming out over the next 6+ months, they might just be the ticket to voter backlash in November that will hit the democrats between the eyes.

The Norcross tapes are the political gift that just keeps on giving. That story isn’t dead, there’s still 300+ hours of tapes being held up by legal maneuvering. As I’ve said before, NJ attorney general Peter Harvey isn’t doing the democrats any favors by fighting a losing battle to block the release of the tapes.

Add on these stories, and you’ve got a smoldering cauldron of potential scandals and bad news that will start feeding voter discontent in this state.

• You’ve got NJ Secretary of State Regena Thomas being raked over the coals about mismanagement at the department under her watch since 2002. Some lawmakers questioned her unpaid vacation during the past national elections to assist the Kerry campaign. The campaign may have offered her a future job in the Kerry administration in exchange for her support. Both sides deny it, following the lead of Bill Clinton, “If two people are in a room and they both deny the story, then nothing happened”. Then this story hits the wires today that Ms. Thomas is a partner is some political consulting firm that received almost a million dollars last fall from the Democratic National Committee, and most of it coming during the weeks leading up to the election. Easy to take “unpaid” leave from one job when your firm is getting bundles of cash. Oh, and Ms. Thomas never mentioned her partnership, even though the state specifically requires it via annual financial disclosure firms. Bye, Bye, Ms. Thomas. Her response was a modified “I didn’t inhale”. Thomas said that, yeah, she’s a partner in the firm, but she never got any money out of it. And Kerry and the DNC can’t exactly say what they got for their $800,000.
• The NJ School Construction Corporation has been taking a beating for mismanagement and wasteful spending while supposedly being the watchdogs for over $8 billion in school construction money. Then this story comes out that 10 of the firms receiving almost $125 million in school construction contracts have also donated a half million dollars to the state democrat party. Republicans only got $50,000 during the same time. Lots of the money was donated on the eve of the pay-to-play ban. And as always with NJ corruption, it’s all “perfectly legal”, though it does sort of smell a bit.
• The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and other NJ public universities are being questioned by the State Commission of Investigation in regards to no-bid contracts and hiring practices [link]. UMNDJ has awarded almost $126 million in no-bid contracts over the past few years, including $75,000 to a McGreevey findraiser who was under federal investigation. And the nice professors and administrators at the school rewarded themselves with millions in bonuses during the same time. The democrats have gone out of their way the past few years to add democrat loyalists and party operatives to the payrolls of state universities and colleges, turning the bastions of higher education into patronage mills.
• The Giants Stadium deal has generally gotten bad reviews from non-political observers. “Sweetheart deal” and “taxpayer rip-off” are just a few of the kinder terms used to describe the state subsidizing a sports franchise while homeowners in the state are losing property tax rebates.
• Let’s not forget the elimination of the NJ Saver Property Tax relief program. Last week was income tax day, a reminder to all NJ tax payers about how much they are getting socked by taxes, and no $800 checks coming this year to offset the ever-rising property tax bill.

Where’s Jon Corzine while all this stuff is hitting the fan?? He’s been a bit quiet. As far as the Giants Stadium deal, he’s officially neutral. Democrat corruption?? “He’ll clean it up”. Property tax reform?? “Let the constitutional convention decide that”. Give me a break!!

The Asbury Park Press joins the DynamoBuzz bandwagon with an editorial, “One department less“. The APP calls for the end of the Department of State and a corresponding savings of $46 million. They even agreed with my statement of a month ago, that if we are going to be getting a Lieutenant Governor position, then just eliminate the Secretary of State and roll those duties over to the new Lieutenant Governor.

So this will be the legacy of the current and hopefully final Secretary of State, Regena Thomas. Her antics were so extreme and her management performance so lacking that if forced our elected officials to take a look at the department.

Charles Webster at the Trentonian has the lowdown on the just brewing scandal concerning the New Jersey Schools Construction Corporation. The NJSCC was created to oversee the spending of over $8 billion in money to be doled out all over the state for school construction projects. The problem was that nobody was watching the NJSCC, and they decided to treat themselves like high priced executives rather than guardians of the public trust. A just completed audit report ripped the covers off the agency and it’s spending practices, and it ain’t pretty.

Webster details some of the spending extravagances. Stuff like over $150,000 in bonuses on top of their regular salaries. Regular salaries that were triple that of comparable private sector employees. Seventeen SCC employees with state owned cars. Almost 4,500 change orders on construction contracts totaling a half billion, and many of the change orders were approved by a single SCC member.

NJ state senator Tom Kean Jr. notes, “The lax oversight and accountability detailed in the report marks a betrayal of the state’s responsibilities to taxpayersand public school students.” NJ State Attorney General Peter Harvey should investigate, but he’s technically an ex-officio member of the SCC board of directors. Figures.

The state needs to clean this up fast. Not only does it make the state look inept on the eve of an election, but they have to go back to the voters sometime in the next year or so and ask for more money to finish what they were supposed to finish with the first bundle of money. $8.6 billion doesn’t last as much as it used to.

First it was the Canadian geese, then brown bears, then the deer. Now it’s wild turkeys invading the urban landscape of New Jersey. Residents of Cranford have filed a half dozen complaints about wild turkeys gone wild [link]. Wild turkeys were almost non-existent in New Jersey during the early part of the 20th century but have not rebounded with an estimated population of 22,000. I’ve seen quite a few in Piscataway but I’ve never seen them fly. The article says they can go up to 55 miles per hour, but I think that’s only if you drop a frozen one out a window. The birds I’ve seen look pretty big and slow.

Enlighten-NewJersey has a post about Howard Dean’s very clumsy attempts to try to portray the democrats as the truly religious and moral party [link]. If you remember from the past election, someone asked Dean what was his favorite book from the New Testament, and he named the Book of Job, which is from the Old Testament.

While I’m no Dean fan, at least he realizes that the democrats have a serious religion problem. Luckily for the republicans, Dean and the democrats are clueless on what to do about it.

CBS News commentator Dick Meyer wrote an opinion piece last week, “The Devoutness Divide” with a good summary of the problems the democrats have with people of faith. He notes that our country doesn’t have one religious denomination battling another as is seen in the rest of the world. The battle lines in the US are drawn between the deeply religious, traditional voters versus the secular and casual religious folk. Meyer notes that the more religious you were and the more often you attended services, the more likely you were to vote republican. This cut across all demographic groups and religions. Bush got 88% of Evangelical Protestant vote. “Traditionalist” catholics went for Bush 72%-28%. Luckily for John Kerry, many US catholics are drifting away from the church, otherwise he would have suffered a Mondale type landslide.

And what do the democrats have to offer?? Howard Dean, totally clueless on religion, along with drifting Catholics like Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy. During the Terry Schiavo saga, the democrats and their allies in the media mocked the people of faith who were against ending Mrs. Schiavo’s life. And during the past year, we’ve had the assault on The Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments monuments and traditional marriage. And of course the secular world’s attempt to purge the word “Christmas” from the holiday season.

Dean’s religious appeals may work with the casually religious but will earn the democrats no good will with people of faith, and may even turn off democrat leaning independent voters who consider themselves religious.

The NJ Assembly started hearings this week into the performance of the Department of State and the NJ Secretary of State, the charming Regena Thomas. The lead paragraph of the article is: Some lawmakers said Tuesday that New Jersey should consider eliminating its Department of State in pointed questioning of Secretary of State Regena Thomas.

Just over a month ago, I wrote about the loudmouth secretary after she went to Paul VI Catholic High School in Haddonfield NJ and delivered a hellfire and brimestone speech about growing up a black woman in white America to the shock and dismay of the student body and faculty who were expecting something a bit more appropriate for a bunch of kids. The end paragraph of my post: Perhaps this would be a good time to reduce the NJ state workforce by one?? Do we really need a Secretary of State?? Until this incident, I bet most NJ residents didn’t even know we had a secretary of state. Eliminate the job..

Hey, I just wanted Thomas out, but if they want to get rid of the whole department, and save a couple of million bucks in process, I won’t complain.

On-line sports bookies Tradesports.com is taking bets on the upcoming NJ governor’s race and the GOP primary. Supposedly they correctly picked between Kerry and Bush in each of the 50 states in the November election, so they must know what they’re doing. They’ve got Jon Corzine favored 85-15 to win the governor’s race in November. They also have Bret Schundler as a heavy favorite over Doug Forrester, with John Murphy in third. Looks like it was close between Schundler and Forrester but that the line is moving strongly toward Schundler.

Daniel has played his first two baseball games of the year, and so far his team is 2-0. Daniel has been up 4 times, and he’s got two walks, one strikeout and he got hit by a pitch in tonight’s game. He got hit over his left eye, but luckily it was a glancing blow. We put some ice on it and he went out to play the outfield in the next inning. He’s a tough little guy.

He was on a fun team last year, but our town mixes up the teams every year so this year he’s on a new team. I guess they don’t want one team to get all the good players and then stay together like a dynasty.

My wife had to work tonight, so I took Allison and Liliana to the game to watch. The weather was great, and the girls took a few game breaks to run over to the playground next to the field.

Star outfielder Daniel. Those pants are just a bit too big.

Liliana liked the game, though I think she liked the Cheez-Its just a little bit more.

Well, looks like Senator Jon Corzine has been trying his hand at blogging. No, not at his campaign blog, www.corzineconnection.com. He’s only posted once over there, and that was earlier today. Most of the writing at Corzine Connection is by his internet director, Matt Stoller. Actually, Corzine’s first blog post was last week over at the DailyKos blog.

DailyKos is the Mecca of left wing democrat outrage on the blogosphere. The typical DailyKos follower thinks Hillary Clinton is a sell out and Michael Moore wasn’t tough enough on George Bush in Fahrenheit 9-11. DailyKos is operated by a democrat consultant, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, whose claim to fame was running a picture last year of the bodies of the four American contractors who were ambushed in Fallujah. If you remember, their burnt bodies were hung from a bridge while a bunch of Iraqui savages smiled in glee. Markos’ comment about the atrocity?? “I feel nothing over the death of the mercenaries. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.” So much for liberal compassion.

Oops, I said a bad word. The “L” word. If you read Corzine’s post at DailyKos, you’ll see that he uses the word “progressive” nine times (use Edit -> Find (on this page) and count). And he also makes up a new word, progressivism. But he never says the “L” word. He makes a big deal over an article he wrote in 2001 where he criticized the Democratic Leadership Council. DailyKos readers hate the DLC, calling the organization “Republican Lite”.

Very interesting that Corzine puts up his “progressive” manifesto over at DailyKos rather than at his own blog.

The post is short on specifics, but then so has his campaign so far. It seems more like an attempt by the junior Senator from New Jersey to shore up his liberal/progressive credentials before the fall campaign, when he’ll play the part of fiscal conservative, corruption fighter.

Yeah!! My host finally straightened out the problems with MySQL. DynamoBuzz crapped out on Friday, probably the worst day for a technical problem. I’ve learned over the years that bad things don’t happen Monday through Thursday.

It was a bit of blogging vacation in some way, so now my blogging batteries have been recharged. I’ll wait until I’m home (don’t like blogging from work) to get back into posting.

I commented last year that it seemed to me like acting governor Richard Codey had a bit of a sports obsession. One of his first acts was to look at expanding racing at Monmouth Park, and he was also looking at building a soccer stadium in addition to his work on a new stadium for the football Giants.

Well, after long negotiations and several threats from the Giants to pack up and leave, the state of NJ reached an agreement with the Giants on a new stadium, details here. The Giants will pay the full cost of the new stadium, estimated at $750 million, to be built near the existing stadium. The state will pay to upgrade the roads around the stadium. The new stadium will seat 80,000, have double the number of luxury suites as the current stadium, and most importantly it will have more bathrooms. Except for about $6 million a year in rent to the state, the Giants will manage the stadium and keep all the money from events, like college football and concerts. And if the Jets new stadium in NYC falls through, the Giants would gladly invite them back to be second class citizens as the “other” team at Giants Stadium. Oops, it won’t be called Giants Stadium, the team will sell the naming rights.

Codey could have really earned some points with NJ residents if he had convinced the Giants to drop the “New York” from the team name and go by the more geographically correct “New Jersey Giants”. Even though it’s been the case for almost 30 years, it still burns me a bit when the the TV camera is focused on the 50 yard line at Giants Stadium, with a big NJ state outline drawn on the field, and the announcers say, “It’s a beautiful day in New York for a football game”.

The articles I’ve read don’t say anything about a dome, and if you’re going to spend $750 million for a stadium, you might as well kick in an extra few million for a retractable dome. A dome would allow the stadium to host big time college basketball events and maybe even a Super Bowl.

I never thought the Giants were serious about leaving, only because I didn’t see many other options for them in the NY-NJ metro area. But on the other hand, the Meadowlands would be a ghost town without a big time sports tenant. Codey is acting like this won’t cost the taxpayers anything, but that’s playing with the facts just a bit.

You can debate all you want about the economics of the deal. Many cities claim that new stadiums help revitalize the areas around the stadium and increase business revenue, like Camden Yards in Baltimore. You really can’t say that about the area around Giants Stadium. Unless you include the go-go bars in the area, I don’t think there’s that much spill over business from fans at Meadowlands events. The Giants will also get the land given to them (I think the state still owns it) and it appears that the state of NJ will get stuck with all or part of about $125 million in debt still owed on the original stadiium. Not too good when you’re denying $600 checks to middle class taxpayers for property tax relief.

A sticking point in the negotiations was plans for the new Xanadu mega entertainment-retail complex to be built in the Meadowlands which will include all types of shopping, theaters and restaurants. The Giants want the thing shut down on gamedays for traffic reasons, but I doubt any business wants to be shutdown for 10 or 12 weekend dates every fall and winter.

New York Post writer Eric Fettmann has an op-ed piece in today’s paper, “The State of Disgust“, and he’s not talking about New York. Fettmann talks about the Norcross tapes and how it finally gives the NJ republican party a chance to put the democrats on the defensive. He talks about how the NJ GOP now has a chance in November to take out Jon Corzine, because Corzine has now been “dirtied” by the tapes and by his association with the Norcross political machine.

One thing Fettmann says is that the tapes might not matter in November because he thinks NJ voters have a high tolerance for corruption, that after years of political graft we have been “defining deviancy down”, lowering the bar of minimally acceptable public behavior. I think that the typical party boss type corruption is difficult for NJ voters to comprehend, but this tape has shook things up because it is easy to follow and understand, particularly for a voter who isn’t a political junkie (like me).

Political blogger Daly Thoughts has analysis of the latest Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind opinion poll on the attitude of New Jersey voters [link]. The poll shows 59% of NJ registered voters think the state is off on the wrong track, higher than last August after Jim McGreevey announced his resignation. Also, acting governor Richard Codey still has a higher favorable to unfavorable ratio than Jon Corzine even after the past month of budget news.

Usually a high “wrong track” number is bad for the incumbents, though this past November the republicans won big even though the national “Is the country on the wrong track?” poll numbers were negative.

The FDU poll is here. The poll asked one George Norcross question, and only 31% of registered voters had heard of him. That’s one thing in Corzine’s favor concerning the Norcross tapes, most NJ voters are not following the story.