NJ Senate passes money-in-politics overhaul that would give Phil Murphy sway over election watchdog

Three weeks after pulling back a massive money-in-politics overhaul bill from full legislative votes, the New Jersey state Senate on Monday passed a slightly altered version that critics say continues to gut pay-to-play laws, weakens the watchdog agency overseeing all elections in the state and contains a second attempt to give the governor more power to choose who leads that agency.

The 68-page Elections Transparency Act (A4372), which passed 24 to 12, is packed with substantial changes to how money flows in New Jersey elections, including increasing the amounts that people and corporations can donate to politicians and parties; illuminating certain “dark money” donors; and cutting down the time accounts can be investigated for violations.

“We must have reform based on the foundation of public transparency, reform that secures our elections from improper influence and expands access. This legislation, however, does not provide that,” said Sen. Nia Gill, the sole Democrat who voted against the bill. “This legislation, in fact, provides the opposite.”

The remaining 21 Democrats in Trenton on Monday voted in favor of the bill, along with three Republicans: Vincent Polistina, Christopher Connors and Jean Stanfield. The legislation requires a full Assembly vote and the governor's signature before becoming law.

After packing the bill with last-minute amendments and having it fly through committees late last month, chamber leaders held the legislation back from planned full Senate and Assembly votes and said they would take a closer look at the late additions to the bill.

Removes confirmation of ELEC members, adds salaries

One change was meant to give the governor power to appoint the executive director of the agency that oversees elections, the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission. Currently, the four ELEC commissioners choose the executive director. The amendment would mean the agency head “shall serve at the pleasure of the governor.”

Senate President Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, who sponsored the bill, said after the Senate session that he “didn’t love that amendment, quite frankly.”

The executive director, Jeff Brindle, filed a lawsuit last Thursday against Gov. Phil Murphy and three top aides, alleging he has been the subject of a “months-long conspiracy” to force him to resign. The lawsuit posits that Brindle is being pushed out because he has been outspoken about dark money, while aides referred to an alleged “anti-gay” email Brindle sent to a colleague, according to the lawsuit.

During a Senate budget committee meeting Thursday, the executive director amendment was struck out and replaced with a new strategy: It would vacate the current four-member ELEC board — where three commissioners currently serve in a holdover capacity and there is one vacancy — and allow the governor to choose four bipartisan appointments without Senate involvement within 90 days of the bill’s enactment.

“The changes in the appointment process will remove the selection of ELEC commissioners from an independent and bipartisan process to one that eliminates all checks and balances between the commission and the executive branch,” Gill said to the chamber before the vote.

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The changes would also give commissioners, who are currently unpaid, $30,000 salaries. Those holding public office or a position in a political party are not eligible to be appointed.

“Current law requires Senate review and confirmation of all nominees and always has,” said Joe Donohue, ELEC deputy director, during the Thursday committee meeting. The provision “erodes the commission's independence from politics, independence that has won it national credibility.”

Expanded donations

The Thursday changes expanded which groups would be required to report donations above $7,500 to cover 501(c)(6) nonprofits, which include business leagues, chambers of commerce or real estate boards, an amendment sought by groups like the League of Women Voters. The bill previously applied solely to super PACs and 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofits, which can spend and raise unlimited amounts of money, unlike candidates and parties.

Lawmakers also cut down what donors could give to newly created “housekeeping accounts” for Democratic and Republican parties to cover “non-political” expenses, like legal costs, accounting and human resources; capital costs, like mortgages or rents and taxes; and costs of county, state or national political party conventions.

Legislators kept in provisions that raised alarms among good government groups, such as cutting down the 10-year statute of limitations to two years for ELEC to investigate allegations that campaigns, parties or groups broke campaign finance and elections rules, and then impose civil penalties.

“We will have an ELEC that is solely appointed by one person, and they'll have to prioritize with a two-year statute of limitations who they go after,” Sen. Holly Schepisi, R-Bergen, said to the chamber before the vote. “I would not be surprised if it's people who speak out or don't toe the line.”

Investigations would be curtailed

Donohue, the deputy director at ELEC, estimated this change would wipe out 80% of the agency’s current active cases. It would apply retroactively, conveniently killing four current investigations looking into allegations of campaign finance law violations from 2017 against Democratic and Republican leadership committees.

“That's crippling the ability of the agency, at least as it's currently structured and funded, to continue to enforce the law,” said Philip Hensley of the League of Women Voters of New Jersey. The bill did not include increased funding to pay for additional investigators.

More:Legislature postpones vote on bill that could gut some NJ campaign finance rules

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Scutari expressed frustration that the drawn-out process often ended with fines years after an initial complaint and when officials under investigation may no longer be in office, and said the legislation added more transparency to a currently opaque system.

He referred to a recent $31,573 fine against Wendy Guzman, who unsuccessfully ran for a Paterson 5th Ward City Council seat in 2016.

“Where is the deterrence in that fine?” Scutari said. “Why should we allow them to go after individuals that aren't even holding office any longer and fine them $32,000 for something that happened before some of us were even in this chamber? It absolutely makes no sense. That's why we have made sure that they prioritize what they're doing over there. How would you like to get a traffic ticket two years after you went through a red light and there would be nothing you could do about it?”

Local pay-to-play laws discarded

The legislation would also discard all local pay-to-play laws in favor of a sometimes-weaker statewide directive governing whether companies holding or seeking government contracts can make political contributions.

The state law would ban companies with contracts worth $17,500 or more from making donations of more than $300 to candidates and parties. But there’s a major exemption called the “fair and open” provision, which allows companies to make political donations if their contract bidding process in local, county and legislative contracts was “fair and open” — a vague standard that could mean anything from open bidding to posting a proposal on a government website.

Arati Kreibich, director of the Working Families Party, urged lawmakers last Thursday to tackle pay-to-play concerns in a separate bill.

“If the intent of this bill is to promote good government practices, this clearly does the opposite,” Kreibich said during Thursday’s hearing. “If the issue is that we have patchwork enforcement, the answer is not to repeal the better legislation, it's instead to have stricter regulation statewide.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ Senate passes Elections Transparency Act, helps Murphy