Post corruption scandal, environmentalists demand ethics reforms
Environmental groups yesterday called for an array of ethics reforms centered around the state Department of Environmental Protection, after a corrpution scandal in which an FBI informant allegedly greased the palms of state and local officials to grease the wheels of development projects.
Yesterday, a coalition of environmental and public interest groups calling itself CleanGreenNJ proposed Gov. Corzine and state lawmakers investigate the DEP, empower whistleblowers within the agency, prohibit legislators from receiving outside sources of income and enact other measures.
“New Jersey’s air, land and water are major victims of political corruption in this state,” Dena Mattola Jaborska, the executive director of Environment New Jersey, said in a statement. “If we want our state to be green, we need to make politics clean. These reforms will help to ensure that government leaders make environmental policy decisions based on science and the law, not money and influence.”
New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel said this case is one example of the systemic corruption in New Jersey that allows developers use pay to play to change zoning, get permits and make millions of dollars at the expense of the environment and taxpayers. “We have to stop this cycle of corruption that leads to sprawl and overdevelopment,” he said.
DEP Deputy Commissioner John Watson told the Star-Ledger the environmentalists’ claims were “nonsense and rhetoric,” and said the department had no response to their recommendations. A spokesman for Gov. Corzine told the paper the accusations were “groundless.”
A petition started by Benson Chiles is circulating about the groups’ proposed ethics reforms; look below for the text of the petition, from change.org, and to sign.
The latest wave of indictments of N.J. public officials demonstrates how developers are able to get what they want through a shadow system of campaign contributions, political connections, and outright bribery. The FBI’s cooperating witness, Solomon Dwek, posing as a developer, provided cash donations to numerous unscrupulous municipal and state level officials in exchange for zoning changes, permit approvals and project support for new development. Just like the previous waves of corruption exposed by operation “bid rig,” it is clear that environmental decisions are made within a “culture of corruption” in which developers are overly influential.
Is it any wonder that the Garden State is so overdeveloped?
Before another wave of corruption comes to light, we citizens of New Jersey concerned about the failure of our democratic institutions, call on Governor Corzine and the state legislature to immediately:
- Investigate DEP operations and enforce ethics rules
- Empower DEP whistleblowers
- Bring transparency for citizen watchdogs
- Fix the campaign finance system and prohibit legislators from receiving outside sources of income
- Rein in recent developer initiatives.
Click here to sign the petition.
August 4th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Hi – One of the key reforms is for DEP to publish meeting logs and calendars. If the Obama WH schedules can be posted on twitter, we can do that at DEP.
Few realize the extent of daily pressure, access, and influence of developers’ and polluters’ lawyers, engineers and lobbyists.
There are also “pre-application” meetings where permit requirements are negotiated.
Lately, DEP has even begun to allow industries to review and modify scientific reports. It’s the Cheney Energy Task Force on steroids!
The public has a right to know about this.
August 6th, 2009 at 9:08 am
What we need is a general house cleaning, however we can get it. This system is badly broken. We also need to reinstate actual professional civil service examinations instead of EE (education and experience) to open up public jobs to truly qualified and capable people and to prevent the endless lateral promotions and cronyism that rewards incompetence. Come to think of it, in Parks & Forestry, we not only have unionized management but the field managers (superintendents) are in the same union as those they supervise! The stench from this decaying agency is unhealthy. And look carefully at the credentials of the political appointees who preside over this mess… Yikes!