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Star Ledger's Paul Mulshine Says "First, Let's Get Rid Of All The Lawyers"; Likens Greedy Attorneys In Politics To Fleas

First, let's get rid of all the lawyers

Paul Mulshine - The Star Ledger, Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Available On Line At www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/

Amid the ethics mess in Trenton, many people are asking what we can do to get the politicians to better represent the people.

That's a bit like asking what we can do to get the fleas to better represent the dog.

We can't. The only thing we can do is try to get rid of the fleas.

State Sen. Gerry Cardinale has been engaged in this effort for some years now. Cardinale, a Republican from Bergen County, is a dentist in real life. He is, in other words, someone who works for a living and who therefore has an incentive to keep government small and taxes low.

Legislature Packed With People Dependent
On Government For Their Income: Lawyers

The same cannot be said for many other legislators. The Legislature is packed with people who also depend on the government for their income in one way or another. The largest such group consists of lawyers, who make up about a third of the Legislature at any given time.

"It's An Inherant Conflict" Says Gerry Cardinale

"It's an inherent conflict because a lawyer is an officer of the court," says Cardinale. Lawyers are subject to the authority of the judicial branch of government and therefore should not also serve in the legislative branch, he says.

Cardinale looks like a prophet after the indictment last week of state Sen. Wayne Bryant of Camden County on federal charges that he picked up a high-paying job in return for steering public money to a university.

A Star-Ledger article on reaction to the indictment in Bryant's hometown quoted a friend of Bryant's who posed the question perfectly: "If you are going to indict him, how many other people can you indict?"

Drumming Up Business Accepted Practice

Good question. It is an accepted practice for lawyer-legislators to use their political clout to drum up business for their law practices. If Bryant crossed the line, just what line did he cross?

No one in Trenton seems to know, says Cardinale. He sat on the ethics committee last year when it dismissed ethics charges against Bryant that were substantially the same as the criminal charges for which he was indicted.

"It boggled my mind that with all we knew we would dismiss that complaint," said Cardinale.

Cardinale noted that all of the Democrats on the committee voted for dismissal, as did two of the Republican members. Both are, coincidentally enough, lawyers.

Republicans Have Been Just As Bad As Democrats

This was no surprise. Republicans have been just as bad as Democrats in using their elected offices to drum up legal work. But that's not the only problem with lawyers. Many lawyer-legislators are unwilling to stand up to the state Supreme Court when it encroaches on the powers of the Legislature in such areas as school funding and zoning for affordable housing.

"We will never impeach a justice for exceeding his authority while we have lawyers in the Legislature," Cardinale said. "In the eyes of a lawyer, a judge never exceeds his or her authority."

Cardinale: Bar Others Paid With Public Funds Too

Just to show he's not prejudiced against lawyers, Cardinale would also bar from the Legislature those in other occupations paid with public funds. All of those county undersheriffs, municipal inspection officials and so forth would have to get real jobs or retire from public "service."

Educators Collect Salaries While In Legislative Session

That would include teachers. The second most popular profession among legislators is public education. Thanks to a law spurred by teacher-legislators, teachers and administrators are permitted under the law to collect their full salaries while skipping school to attend legislative sessions.

This practice hit a new low when Jersey City School Superintendent Charles Epps Jr. won a seat in the Assembly in 2004. The Democrat collects $231,000 a year for his full-time job in the state-run school district as well as $49,000 as an assemblyman. That may sound like a conflict to you and me, but again the Trenton ethics police thought it was perfectly fine for the leader of a troubled school district to spend a big chunk of his time in Trenton.

Grants For Favors Ignored By Ethics Committee Also

The toothless ethics watchdogs in Trenton also ignored dozens of ethics complaints filed by Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan and his advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity. Most involved some variation on the grants-for-favors theme that got Bryant indicted. The Joint Committee on Ethical Standards wasn't interested, but U.S. Attorney Chris Christie seems to be. He is busy finding potential criminal violations where the ethics watch dogs couldn't even find room for a reprimand.

A World Without Fleas

Some reformers says the solution is to have a full-time Legislature, one in which legislators would be prohibited from any outside employment. That sounds nice, but we could keep the current part-time arrangement as long as we adopted Cardinale's rule.

"If somehow the people who would make the judgment were not lawyers, we could do it," said Cardinale.

Indeed we could. And we can dream of that in the same way dogs can dream of a world without fleas.