What is Booker Hiding? Why?

Neither Booker nor Lonegan have been as forthcoming as Mendenez and Kyrillos were last year

© Jim Urquhart / Reuters;

Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Cory Booker has not released his tax returns, despite a promise to do so, according to the New York Post.

“We will release his tax returns,” vowed Booker campaign spokesman Kevin Griffis more than two weeks ago, yesterday claiming Booker “will continue to raise the bar on transparency — both in this election, and if elected, in the US Senate.”

GOP nominee Steve Lonegan provided three years of returns exclusively to The Post.  The paper said that Lonegan earned $515,280 in 2012, mostly from property sales, and paid nearly $100,000 in federal taxes.

Lonegan said Booker is refusing to release his returns because he used his office, Newark Mayor, to accumulate personal wealth.

“It’s indicative of the fact that he’s got something to hide,” Lonegan told The Post. “It’s clear to me that Booker leveraged the office of mayor . . . to gain wealth.”

The Post has previously reported that Booker received an undisclosed amount in an equity payout from the law firm he was a partner in before being elected mayor. The payout was made from 2007 through 2011.  During that time the firm, Trenk DiPasquale,  collected more than $2 million in fees from local agencies that Booker has direct influence over.

The New York Times reported in May that Booker has earned $1.3 million in speaking fees since becoming mayor and that his Newark home is assessed at $406,000. He earns a salary of $174,496 as mayor.

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Prosecutor to investigate leak of Cryan’s emails

Barnes & Noble Nook photo

Sussex County First Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Mueller is launching an investigation into how the New York Post received copies of the salacious email exchages between Assemblyman Joe Cryan and former Corzine staffer Karen Golding, according to a report on NJ.com.  Mueller told the Star Ledger that the emails were sealed by Court Order.

The initial NYPost report said the emails were dropped at a reporter’s doorstep.  The story has since been updated, omitting that information.

Who is going to investigate Cryan using government computers to describe his erections?

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Lautenberg Recommends Schumer’s Brother-in-law For Federal Bench

New Jersey is “stunned”

New Jersey was stunned that U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg recommended U.S Senator Chuck Schumer’s brother-in-law to be a federal judge, according to a headline in the NYPost.

I live in New Jersey and I’m not stunned.  Are you stunned?

Lautenberg  and Senator Robert Menendez recommended Kevin McNulty of Short Hills for a federal judgeship in October.  President Obama nominated McNulty for a seat on the New Jersey District bench on December 16th.

McNulty, a Director of the Newark firm, Gibbons, PC is married to Schumer’s sister Fran.

The Post says that McNulty was a last minute choice of Lautenberg who had been actively considering other candidates and that the choice was made to keep New Jersey’s senior citizen senator in the good graces of Schumer who will help him stave off a movement within the Democratic party to challenge his nomination for reelection in 2014.

Lautenberg will be 88 years old in January.  He’ll be 90 on election day 2014.  96 at the end of another term, should he be reelected and survive.

Lautenberg’s staff denied that politics was involved with the McNulty appointment.  The senator didn’t even know McNulty was related to Schumer when his name first came up for a judicial appointment in 2009.  Maybe he forgot.

Schumer’s staff denied that he had anything to do with the nomination.

The point of the story seems to be that Lautenberg is running for another term.  Not even Frank Pallone is stunned by that news. 

The other point would be that a candidate for the bench other than McNulty was stunned. Oh well.

The good news is the McNulty appears to be qualified to be a federal judge.  The Schumer-McNulty’s do not appear to have bought political influence.  McNulty has made on $2000 in federal campaign contributionssince 2000; $500 to Jon Corzine’s senatorial election campaign and $1500 to his firms PAC.  Fran Schumer gave another $500 to Corzine in 2000.

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NJ’s Supreme Injustice

Court feeds political machines

By Steven Malanga, In today’s NY Post

New Jersey’s Supreme Court ruled last week that the cash-strapped state must send another $500 million in aid to urban school districts — the latest in a long series of decisions disconnected from economic reality and wise public policy.

Over the last 40 years, Jersey’s high court has commandeered tens of billions of dollars of state tax money that has largely been wasted on schools, forced taxes higher and undermined the tax base of whole communities — in the process, driving the state to the verge of insolvency.

Basing its original decision on a vague clause in the state Constitution that says the state must ensure “a thorough and efficient system of free public schools,” the court made the state responsible for funding urban school districts — regardless of whether the money was well spent.

 Courts in other states, including New York, have interpreted similar language to mean that states should provide more aid to urban districts. But Jersey’s high court essentially ruled that schools in 31 poor “Abbott districts” should be funded at a level equal to the states’ wealth iest school districts — making Jersey’s among the most expensive urban school districts in America.

Newark spends $23,000 per pupil; Camden, $22,000; Asbury Park, $27,000. Most of that money comes from the state — 82 percent of Newark’s school budget, for instance.

So residents in many suburban towns essentially pay for two school systems: their own, through local property taxes, and urban schools, through their state taxes — costing state residents a staggering $37 billion since 1998, according to estimates in The New York Times.

Even if this spending produced stellar results, it would be hard to justify this system: The steep property taxes it requires have helped make homeownership unaffordable even to many middle-class residents. But the results have been the opposite of stellar. As the education reform group E3 observes in a study of Newark, “Money For Nothing”: “Given the extraordinary expenditure on schooling, students are not receiving a meaningful education.”

Despite claims that it wanted to ensure “thorough and efficient” schools, the court has done nothing but feed dollars to a patronage-laden Jersey political culture.

For example, when the court ruled that Jersey had to spend heavily to build schools in urban districts, the state floated billions of dollars of debt through a construction authority it created to get around the requirement that voters must approve all borrowing. The court not only allowed the scheme — but when the construction authority proved so corrupt and inefficient that it only finished half the job with the money it got, the court forced the state to spend billions more.

The court has also reshaped the state’s map with decisions known as the Mount Laurel cases, by taking local zoning powers away from towns and cities and requiring municipalities to build affordable housing, often at great cost.

In one infamous case, it ordered the tiny township of Greenwich, with only 520 housing units, to add 810 homes, sending property taxes soaring. The burden fell especially hard on middle-income residents; later court rulings gave big property-tax breaks to the lower-income units.

The latest ruling has spurred Gov. Chris Christie in his pledge to remake the Supreme Court. Last year, he outraged the state’s political establishment by refusing to renominate Justice John Wallace, breaking with a tradition in which Supreme Court justices are automatically reappointed. The Democratic-controlled Senate refused to consider Christie’s nominee for the job, allowing Chief Justice Stuart Rabner to appoint a temporary replacement judge, who was the key swing vote in the decision to spend $500 million more in school aid.

That’s money the state doesn’t have — Jersey can’t even afford to contribute to its severely underfunded state pension system.

New Yorkers, beware. In 2007, the Empire State agreed to boost state education spending by an unrealistic $7 billion over four years in response to a lawsuit brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. But facing a $10 billion budget hole, Gov. Cuomo has cut education aid by $1.5 billion, prompting threats of another CFE lawsuit — even though New York still leads the nation in per-pupil spending.

The courts shouldn’t become a permanent substitute for our elected officials in managing state spending. As Jersey has taught us, when judges seize that power, taxpayers wind up big losers.

Steve Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute; his new book is “Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer.”

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