Abolishing NJ’s county party line is only a start

The court ruling overturning the county party line is an important first step toward bringing New Jersey residents the democracy they deserve. Assuming the court decision holds, as seems likely, it will eliminate the unfair ballot favoritism that gave the endorsed candidates of county political parties — who are often selected by a few party bosses — a big advantage. This leveling of the playing field will be an incentive for more candidates to compete for the nomination of their political party, and with competition comes quality.

This welcome development, however, by itself will not provide the reforms needed to empower all New Jerseyans to participate robustly in finding and implementing solutions to the challenges facing our towns, state and country. It’s time to use the reform momentum created by this victory to move New Jersey to the head of the pack on citizen empowerment.

Here are three major steps we can take:

● Building on the requirements of New Jersey’s 2009 Party Democracy Act, mandating that all county political parties adopt rules for their operation, the neighborhood-level party representatives can advance party reforms to further empower citizens. They can, for example, move to require that all candidate endorsements be made by a secret ballot vote — preferably employing voting machines to ensure confidentiality — of the grassroots county committee members. This is a reform I instituted when I served as chair of the Middlesex County Democratic Party. It led to a more diverse and qualified set of candidates.

● Instead of moving to gut the state’s open records law, as state legislative

Coupled with the abolishment of the party line, these major reforms will create a more robust, open and transparent democracy in the Garden State. It will better enable us to tap all the common sense, ingenuity and good ideas of New Jerseyans

and move our state forward.

leaders seem bound and determined to do, we can strengthen and modernize it. Seizing on the advances in technology since the law’s passage more than 20 years ago, we should create easier and more universal access to government records. We should require municipal, county and state governments, for instance, to place all ordinances, laws and resolutions in searchable databases and to post “citizens budgets” on their websites, providing budget information in a standard, user-friendly way. This would have the added advantage of reducing the need for specific records requests.

● We should reverse the gutting of New Jersey’s pay-to-play protections that occurred last year with the adoption of the sham Elections Transparency Act. This law is taking a sledgehammer to the protections that were designed to ensure high-quality, cost-effective, government contracting, practically guaranteeing a return to the bad old days, when New Jersey government at all levels wasted hundreds of millions of tax dollars on bloated contracts that yielded subpar results. Let’s put these essential protections back in place and strengthen the rules against circumvention, along with upping the penalties to provide a stronger deterrent.

Coupled with the abolishment of the party line, these major reforms will create a more robust, open and transparent democracy in the Garden State. It will better enable us to tap all the common sense, ingenuity and good ideas of New Jerseyans and move our state forward.

Harry Pozycki, founder of The Citizens Campaign and The Citizen Service, helped lead the successful fights for the adoption of the Party Democracy Act, the Open Public Records Act and New Jersey state and local payto-play laws.