Christie Lays Out Anti-Corruption Plan

Aug. 4, 2009 -- New Jersey Republican gubernatorial
candidate Chris Christie is trying to boost his image as a
corruption-buster with a plan to crack down on political graft,
which he laid out two weeks after lawmakers and rabbis were snared
in a federal sting.
Those corruption arrests -- and the subsequent resignations of
two mayors and a state assemblyman -- propelled the issues of
corruption and ethics to the forefront of the New Jersey
gubernatorial campaign, which pits Christie, a former federal
prosecutor, against incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine.
The arrests set off a political exchange that may not die before
the November election. The corruption scandal gives Christie and
his running mate, Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno, an opening
to campaign on their strongest issue: law and order.
Christie's 10-point plan includes proposals to suspend from
office any public official charged in a corruption case, prohibit
indicted officials from using campaign funds to pay for their
criminal defense, and require convicted public officials to forfeit
their government pensions.
The plan, laid out in a Paramus church before about 60 Christie
supporters, includes several ideas the tough-talking former U.S.
attorney unveiled previously and that Corzine has proposed or
partially enacted.
For example, Christie said he would ban dual-officeholding if he
is elected governor in November. Corzine signed a law barring
future lawmakers from holding more than one elected post after the
Legislature failed to deliver a tougher measure banning those
already in office.
Christie's plan would extend the ban so that any elected
official would be unable to hold a government job, elected or
appointed. The Legislature has been unwilling to support far less
sweeping measures, however.
"Based on what I read, everything that's in the plan is a
pretty much a rehash of what we've already laid out and put in
front of the Legislature," Corzine said at an earlier event in
Camden. "I think it's the political season."
The Assembly Republican leader has been urging the governor to
call a special legislative session this summer to consider ethics
reforms. Corzine, however, has said there are already laws on the
books that make bribery illegal.
Christie called the corruption arrests "a failure of
leadership" and accused Corzine of putting politics ahead of
principle as he handled the fallout. He said the governor took a
hard line in politically insignificant Ridgefield, where he froze
development permits because the mayor has refused to resign amid
corruption charges, but not in the Democratic stronghold of Jersey
City, where eight elected and public officials have been charged.
Corzine signed an executive order Monday ordering state
departments to suspend development approvals in towns where a mayor
is charged with a public corruption crime. The mayors of nearby
Hoboken and Secaucus, who were also charged in the sting, had
already resigned; the mayor of Jersey City has not been charged.
"You'll have to decide what grandstanding is," Corzine said in
repsonse to Christie's charges.