Star Ledger Editorial

"Consider CleanGreenNJ's call for a DEP government cleanup"

Press Release: Environmental Leaders Launch Reform Initiative

News Release

For Release: August 3, 2009, 12:30 PM

CONTACTS: Dena Mottola Jaborska: 609-540-6609

David Pringle: 908-967-9264

Jeff Tittel: 609-558-9100

Bill Wolfe: 609-397-4861

Environmental Leaders Launch Reform Initiative

In Response to Latest Corruption Scandals

Trenton – Responding to the latest “bid rig” corruption indictments, New Jersey environmental leaders today proposed a comprehensive platform of ethics reforms to prevent future abuses and called on Governor Corzine and the state legislature to take aggressive and immediate action to enact it.

"New Jersey's air, land and water are major victims of political corruption in this state. If we want our state to be green, we need to make politics clean,” stated Dena Mottola Jaborska, the Executive Director of Environment New Jersey. “These reforms will help to ensure that government leaders make environmental policy decisions based on science and the law, not money and influence."

The reform agenda was developed by “CleanGreenNJ,” a new consortium of environmental and public interest organizations which includes Environment NJ, NJ Environmental Federation, NJ Environmental Lobby, NJ Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation and others.

"We can never have clean air or clean water without clean government," said Jeff Tittel, Director NJ Sierra Club. "Just like we have to clean up toxic waste sites, we have to clean up government and that is why we are forming this coalition. In New Jersey, development has become part of enterprise corruption: you take a worthless piece of property, use pay to play to change the zoning and get permits and then make millions. We have to stop this cycle of corruption that leads to sprawl and overdevelopment"

In order to restore the public trust and confidence in the agency, CleanGreenNJ is calling for an independent investigation of the DEP, to determine what happened and how pervasive the problems are. The group is also calling for whistleblower protections for DEP employees, and new government transparency to empower citizen watchdogs.

CleanGreenNJ’s platform calls on Governor Corzine and the NJ State legislature to:

• 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

"DEP conducts public business behind closed doors, and provides routine daily access to political players and corporate lobbyists, said Bill Wolfe, the Director of NJ PEER. “This access is used to influence science and regulatory decisions and weaken protections. DEP then conceals these liaisons from the public by refusing to publish visitor logs, honor OPRA requests, or disclose meeting schedules. In fact, they even retaliate against conscientious employees who disclose corrupt practices."

“We need to make DEP transparent, return protection of the environment and the public interest to the forefront of the agency's mission, and restore the integrity of the Department." concluded Wolfe.

“This is not just a few bad apples,” added David Pringle, Campaign Director for the New Jersey Environmental Federation. “This is systemic corruption.”

“Given the number of recent arrests and convictions of public officials, especially given the difficulty of proving corruption, it's clear that we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg,” continued Pringle. “The only way clean officials can distinguish themselves from dirty ones is by immediately and aggressively implementing strong steps like those we're proposing. It is an outrage that it has come to this, it is an outrage how willing so many are to betray the public trust, and it is an outrage that so many have fallen so far short even in the first 10 days since the latest arrests."

For more information about their campaign and to sign a petition to Governor Corzine and the legislature, visit: www.cleangreennj.net.

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CleanGreenNJ Call to Action

Investigate Corruption Culture, Empower Whistleblowers, and Bring New Transparency
A common thread in the latest wave of indictments of NJ public officials is 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 over-developed?

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’s administration and the state legislature to immediately initiate an independent investigation into the culture of corruption that threatens the ability of the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to do its job.

We also ask for whistleblower reforms to empower employees to speak out when unethical behavior is witnessed. Further, we ask for rules that will require new transparency in DEP operations. Finally we seek long-term reforms that will fix the system, including developer pay-to-play reforms and a prohibition on outside sources of income for members of the legislature.

Comprehensive CleanGreenNJ Platform

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

Investigate DEP operations and enforce ethics rules:

Problem: According to the criminal complaints, Assemblyman Smith was bribed to exert political influence at DEP to secure clean-up approval to allow construction of a day care center on a toxic waste site in Jersey City.

Assemblyman Van Pelt accepted a bribe to expedite and secure DEP CAFRA (Coastal Area Facilities Review Act) and wetlands permits for a multi-use real estate development. He bragged that he knew the “right guys.”

Solutions:

1) Because DEP was directly involved in the bribery scheme, to restore public confidence and trust in the integrity of the agency, an independent investigation must be initiated to determine what happened and how pervasive the problems are.

2) Review Election Law Enforcement Commission as it applies to DEP and attempts to influence government process. Implement rulemaking and enforcement measures, including disclosure of and limitations on the types of communication legislators can have with the DEP, and transparency and disclosure of all meetings between DEP and lobbyists, lawyers, engineers, and representatives of regulated industries.

3) Extend current ethics law post-employment restriction from companies seeking DEP approvals from one year to five (and perpetuity for any matter involving a company that the employee worked on), and strengthen, monitor and enforce the restriction.

4) Create a new office of DEP Inspector General

5) Restore the Environmental Prosecutor's office and the environmental function in the Public Advocate’s office.

Empower DEP whistleblowers:

Problem: To facilitate development projects, state legislators pressure DEP to improperly approve permits, sign-off on incomplete clean-ups and shelve enforcement actions. Typically, legislators deliver their messages to the DEP Commissioner or the Assistant Commissioners, who in turn direct staff. As one of the indicted lawmakers, state Rep. Daniel Van Pelt, who sits on the committee overseeing DEP, bragged to the FBI confidential informant, the DEP “worked for him.”

Solution: DEP employees should be empowered to disclose wrongdoing with stronger whistleblower protections that cover such areas as threats to public health and safety, waste and mismanagement, and manipulation of science and favoritism in permits and enforcement.

Bring transparency for citizen watchdogs:

Problem: DEP and other government entities, like the Department of Community Affairs(DCA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT), which convene closed-door meetings where they make decisions on enforcement and other pollution control policies with lobbyists, legislators and other insiders with no public attendance or publication of meeting agendas. The DEP defends this secrecy as a matter of “executive privilege and the deliberative process privilege”; it shields appointment calendars to protect “the privacy interests” of attendees; and under current rules, agency scientists and other specialists are barred from speaking without prior approval from the agency Press Office. DEP says this is needed to enforce the chain-of-command.

Solutions:

1) Notice all meetings with outside entities, including developers and lobbyists

2) Publish the calendars of top officials, just as President Obama publishes his calendar online in real-time.

3) Repeal DEP policy that allows political appointees to interfere in the drafting and public release of scientific reports.

4) Fix OPRA (Open Public Records Act) to end the denial of information to the public based on arcane and bogus legal pretext including “deliberative” and “executive” privilege

Fix the campaign finance system and prohibit legislators from receiving outside sources of income:

Problem: Government is supposed to protect the people from the special interests, instead NJ Government is protecting special interests from the public.

Solutions:

1) Strengthen state “pay-to-play” laws to address wheeling and bundling.

2) Apply “developer pay-to-play” reform at county and municipal levels

3) Prohibit legislators from accepting income from other sources.

4) Public financing of political campaigns

Rein in recent developer initiatives

Problem: In response to the recent downturn in the economy, the Governor and the Legislature have embraced a narrow and shortsighted policy agenda and enacted a series of laws designed to promote economic development. But they have done so in a way that fails to consider harms to the environment and that undermines citizen and government oversight. In fact, special interests have used the economic recession as a pretext for rolling back environmental protections and privatizing essential government functions, like the cleanup of toxic waste sites.

Solutions: The recently enacted Permit Extension Act, Licensed Site Remediation Professionals law; and economic stimulus package need to be amended by the Legislature to ensure that special interests to not hijack them to the detriment of the public interest. To do so, these initiatives must be subject to transparency, conflict of interest, and ethics reforms.