Lack of marijuana sales isn't a travesty. Lack of concern over veterans home deaths is — Stile

Senate President Nicholas Scutari is so furious with the latest bureaucratic delay in the sale of legal pot that he's calling for special legislative hearings to investigate this latest travesty.

"These delays are totally unacceptable," the Linden Democrat said in a statement. “We need to get the legal marijuana market up and running in New Jersey."

Yet, when I asked him last week whether any hearings are being planned to investigate the travesty of 200 COVID-linked deaths at the state-operated veterans homes, Scutari had nothing much to say.

"I don't have an opinion on it at this point,'' he said inside the Statehouse on Tuesday. "I don't have a position at this point that I'm going to put out."

Don't hold your breath waiting for that one. If the veteran legislator, armed with enormous power to control the legislative agenda, has not taken a position on hearings over the veterans home debacle by now, it's never going to happen.

The grim death toll at the state's three, state-run facilities represents one of the nation's worst nursing home disasters during the pandemic. It has been a source of horror and heartbreak for families and shame for the state.

Yet despite a promise in May 2020 to fast-track hearings into the debacle, there has been little zeal or interest to explore, in unvarnished detail, just what happened, what needs to be fixed, and whether the first round of remedies — including a raft of laws signed in the heat of last year's election season — are sufficient to protect patients from the next surge.

A United States Justice Department investigation is lurking somewhere on the horizon. And so is a state Attorney General's Office probe.

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Yet, those purported inquiries should not stop the Legislature from exercising its oversight powers. In fact, Scutari's predecessor, Steve Sweeney, vowed in May 2020 to launch a no-holds-barred probe. And, in fact, lawmakers did huddle for a one-time hearing in August 2020 that offered some searing testimony.

But that was it. No follow-through like what we witnessed for months on end during the George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal. A bipartisan, special joint Senate and Assembly panel, armed with subpoena power, held high-profile hearings throughout the winter and spring of 2014.

That was an investigation into a bizarre political payback scheme that tied up traffic in Fort Lee for five days, paralyzing one of the most heavily trafficked areas in the nation. No one lost their life as a direct result of that warped enterprise, but people did die in the Paramus and Menlo Park veterans homes in astonishing numbers. Another 13 died inside the home in Vineland.

Related: Two years since veterans home Covid disaster, Murphy's promise of 'full accounting' has gone nowhere

Doesn't Trenton owe the families and the public a little more effort than one hearing?

A legislative panel with subpoena power just might have a better time than my colleagues at NorthJersey.com in getting the Murphy administration to release emails among top officials at the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs over the management of the home in the first wave of the pandemic in 2020.

After months of legal wrangling and court hearings, we finally received 147 pages of documents — almost all of them completely redacted. Call it Stonewalling 101.

"I think we still deserve to know what exactly happened, who made the decisions, and when did they make those decisions, and who were they taking their marching orders from?'' said Sen. Michael Testa, the South Jersey Republican whose district includes the Vineland home.

I asked Scutari if he had any discussions with the governor about holding possible hearings. "Maybe a brief one,'' he said. "I don't recall it."

Gov. Phil Murphy, as you might have heard by now, vowed an independent, root-to-branch investigation of the veterans home debacle during last year's campaign. He called it a "full accounting" — although when that will happen and how remains unclear.

Pressed for more details about the governor's intentions, a spokeswoman referred me to his recent "full accounting" pledges and "post-mortem" promises and also cited the June 2020 consultant's report recommending reforms for long-term care facilities.

But that "rapid review" barely mentioned veterans homes. In fact, the report's authors made it clear that their focus was broadly on nursing homes and not specifically veterans homes. There was barely a mention of them in the report.

The report didn't address questions that point to troubling breakdowns in veterans home administration. Why were infected dementia patients at the Paramus home allowed to mingle with uninfected when federal inspectors descended on the facility in April 2020?

Was this just one of the many understandable mistakes in managing a once-in-a-century pandemic without a "playbook?" as Murphy often says. Or was it the breakdown in communication and a failure to aggressively prepare for a deadly threat that was sweeping the rest of the world in March 2020? Are protocols in place to prevent that from happening again?

Related: Murphy administration agrees to pay $53M to 119 families of veterans home victims

Hearings might also help clear the air over the much-disputed state Health Department directive requiring long-term care facilities to readmit residents who had contracted the virus so long as they had been discharged from hospitals.

Did these returning patients become vectors of the virus or was it spreading through the wards and rooms before they returned? And if so, why? Was it lax procedures, poorly equipped staff and miscommunication that allowed the virus to rampage through unchecked? And is there adequate space to quarantine residents in a future wave or do the facilities need to be expanded and upgraded?

And why, exactly, were the CEOs of Menlo Park and Paramus shown the door? Did they bear the brunt of responsibility, or are they scapegoats for a broader systemic failure and breakdown in communication with Murphy's main office?

Those important questions may never get answered.

At the moment, pot is the priority.

Scutari, who has been the longtime driving force behind legalizing marijuana, was torqued last week when the Cannabis Regulatory Commission postponed a vote to allow existing medical marijuana dispensaries to begin selling legal weed to recreational customers over 21 years old.

The reason? It seems that there's a supply chain problem.

The panel's director said there is not enough weed in the pipeline to provide for the medical marijuana patients and the expected glut of new recreational customers once the commission greenlights sales. So they're buying time. Another hearing is scheduled on Monday

It doesn't strike me as the most pressing crisis facing the state, and in a time when Ukrainians are in dire need of food, blankets and medicine and other vital supplies, the public rant for pot seems a little tone deaf.

The pot will make its way into dispensaries and long-denied and eager pot buyers will soon be queuing up in shopping centers and downtowns. The cash and cannabis will flow through the Garden State. It's what the voters approved in a November 2020 referendum. Eventually, there will be plenty of legal weed to help relax all those amped up about the delay.

Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin issued a statement that he shared Scutari's concerns on the "lack of momentum in getting New Jersey's adult-use market established." But he's going to wait to see what the commission says when it addresses the issue Monday.

But when pressed about holding hearings on the veterans homes, a spokeswoman said he was unavailable for comment.

In some ways, it's not surprising. The Democratic lawmakers and Murphy set aside their intraparty hostilities last year and unified for the difficult general election race.

The promised "moral obligation'' probe was ditched. Surviving a right-wing backlash became the chief concern. It was not a time for a messy probe with unflattering headlines. It would only give attack fodder to the Republicans.

The new mantra in Trenton is affordability, not accountability This is a time to carve up the spoils of a resurgent economy. The treasury is full. It's a time to look forward, not soul-search over the past.

That future will include the reopening of the newly renovated Statehouse, possibly by the end of this year. It should be impressive. A new paint job and new walls for the mutton-chopped governors of the past to peer down from their portraits.

And new plush carpets where lawmakers and governors can tuck away scandal and the messy failures of government.

Charlie Stile is a veteran political columnist. For unlimited access to his unique insights into New Jersey’s political power structure and his powerful watchdog work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: stile@northjersey.com

Twitter: @politicalstile

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ veteran home deaths rank below legal marijuana sales