N.J. report found majority of local agencies don't meet basic transparency benchmarks Watch video
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Sens. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex), left, and Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth) in file photos. The two senators have sponsored a bill that would require N.J. local authorities, boards and commissions to maintain websites in effort to increase transparency.TRENTON — New Jersey’s many local authorities, boards and commissions would be required to maintain websites with at least basic information about their budgets, meetings and employee rolls, under a new bipartisan bill introduced in Trenton.
The legislation, sponsored by Sens. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex) and Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth), comes just weeks after state Comptroller Matthew Boxer released a report that found a majority of the state’s 587 local government agencies fail to follow basic transparency benchmarks.
Yet those same local authorities, boards and commissions spend a combined $5 billion annually and are responsible for putting 10,000 employees in the overburdened state pension system, according to Boxer’s report.
The spending by local government agencies has received renewed scrutiny since Governor Christie took office last year and declared the authorities, boards and commissions New Jersey’s "shadow government."
Boxer’s report, released on Feb. 15, found that only seven of the 587 local agencies met the basic set of transparency benchmarks his office established, including maintaining a website with meeting schedules, minutes, budgets and other financial information and a list of employees.
Nearly 40 percent of the local agencies maintain no website at all, according to Boxer’s report.
The bipartisan bill, introduced in response to the report, would force the authorities, boards and commissions to follow a series of recommendations put forward by Boxer, who has also created a new "transparency portal" for 1,900 government agencies at his office’s website, www.state.nj.us/comptroller.
Among other requirements, the local agencies would be forced to maintain websites listing the entity’s mission, the name and phone number of its principal officer, a complete list of full-time and part-time employees, meeting minutes and meeting notices. The agencies would also have to post online their current budget and audit, and those for the three preceding years, as well as rules, regulations, resolutions and policy statements.
The new law would apply to fire districts, housing authorities, joint insurance funds, workforce investment boards, soil conservation districts, regional health commissions, county parks commissions and urban enterprise zone development corporations.
Christie, a former federal prosecutor who targeted public corruption in that office, has taken steps to control spending by state-affiliated authorities, including vetoing meeting minutes to undo questionable budget and personnel decisions.
The governor has also called on lawmakers to do more to rein in the local government agencies, including granting him the power to veto the meeting minutes at the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners and the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission. So far, the Legislature has failed to cooperate.
Christie, in late January, also pressured six of the seven members of the sewerage agency commission to resign or face ethics charges for hiring of relatives and friends, and providing no-bid contracts to politically connected professionals.
And the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office last week seized records from the Passaic Valley Water Commission, several weeks after The Record reported that water commission employees and management routinely took home tens of thousands of dollars in extra pay each year through a variety of enhancements.