Reporters Roundtable; Episode 2122

It is cold. Matter of fact, wind gusts 20 to 30 miles an hour, Saturday, so it doesn't matter that the sun shines brightly. Sun glasses and an overcoat will pick up more clouds on Sunday. Wet weather is in the form of rain, maybe a little bit of wet snow, but it doesn't arrive here until late Monday and Tuesday. Want to catch up on what's happened in Trenton, Statehouse, and political reporters are our guests each week on reporters' roundtable, Friday nights at 6.30 and Sunday mornings at 10. At PSENG, we believe reliability means having the power and commitment to weather the weather, thunderstorms and tornadoes, hurricanes and blizzards. Over the past century, we've seen it all. We're proud of our reputation for reliably delivering power to millions of New Jersey homes and businesses. Each and every day. We work around the clock, sometimes in incredibly adverse conditions, to make sure the lights stay on until you turn them off.

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Wayne Bryan is convicted on all counts in a federal corruption case. Jockeying begins for one of two open state senate seats, and the state budget crisis produces talk of wage freezes, pension payment holidays, and dramatic declines in the value of the state pension system. Welcome to reporters' roundtable. I'm Michael Aaron. With us this week, four reporters whose value is not in decline, Dunston McNichol of the Newark Star ledger, Greg Vulpie of Gennett, New Jersey, Trish Graber of the Gloucester County Times, and Matt Friedman of PolitikerNJ.com. U.S. Attorney Chris Christie announced on Monday that he's resigning effective December 1st. The move was seen as a prelude to a possible run for governor, but Christie is also looking at the corporate world and private law firms. Somebody wrote last week that he could make $3 million a year in the private sector, and Christie confirms that's his sense too. But he seems committed to public service, and said he's more interested in happiness

than money. We sat down with him Tuesday, and asked if the current economic crisis might give him pause about wanting to be governor. He said, not really, because you never know what might be coming down the pike. Because you never know what's going to come around the corner, let's face it, two months ago, no one had any idea we would be in this kind of financial crisis. Really it was the collapse of Lehman brothers that led to the exacerbation of this problem. Two months before this, in the presidential campaign, you weren't talking a lot about this stuff. So, you know, public life is crazy that way. You never know what's going to confront you. So, I don't think you make judgments that way. I think you make judgments based upon your skills and abilities, and whether you think you bring something to the table, that is a value. And if you think you do, then you get in there, and you deal with what you're dealt. Trish Graver, do you think he's going to run for governor? I think the party wants him to run. Yeah, I think he's going to run.

Yeah. But, you know, I think he had to get out of that office anyway. Well, he would have not had that office because Barack Obama was elected. So, you know, a Democrat is going to be put in his place. So maybe he's just, you know, leaving before he's kicked out. And he could still take one of those $3 million a year job. But I suppose, Dusty, what's your sense? I sure think that there's going to be an enormous amount of pressure on him to run. And it's going to be made a very attractive proposition for him to run. And I would think if I were him, it'd be hard to turn down. It's, you know, I think he's got a really open shot at winning if he runs. And I think that would go into the figuring in a big way. Right? I think he'll run. But I think it's going to be interesting to see it because he hasn't, he hasn't been a politician in more than 10 years, more, I mean. Some Democrats would use that, but go ahead. Of course.

No, I do expect him to run. And he certainly seems right now to be the Republicans, the best shot at this. Even if, as Quirzai would say, he has a lot of expertise on one issue. On one issue, we'll get to that. Greg, you take? Well, I'm like an unanimous. He started hinting at it right there when he said, if you think you have something to offer, then you get involved. And he's clearly confident in his abilities. Otherwise, he wouldn't have amassed the track record. He did as U.S. attorney. So I take that as a big sign that we'll hear an announcement real soon. There was a poll out this week that showed Quirzai in at 42 and Christie at 36 percent of Quinnipiac poll line, I think of the sample was 2,000 people, which is large for one of these polls. One of you said Christie is the best shot they have, but does he go into it on an equal footing with Quirzai, or as the underdog, if he goes. If he goes.

Too soon to tell. Yeah, I think that's more a Patrick Murray, the pollster from Mom and The University, not the one who conducted that poll, said to me that he felt this wasn't really, you know, they put Christie's name in there, but it's more, could be just generic Republican with Chris Christie. The way the question was asked or something. Well, when you're looking at that, right, because 70 percent of people, according to the poll, either don't know who Christie is or don't know enough about him to form a judgment, despite how we talk about him every single day, most people don't really know who he is yet. So we'll have to see. Plus, I think it's impossible to calculate how John Quirzai is going to play out next year at this point in time, because the financial crisis is so overwhelming, and what happens between now and next March is just going to have an enormous bearing on his process if he's still here. We'll get to some of those issues. What about the idea of Christie as a one issue candidate? He's the corruption fighter, but what does he know about fiscal matters? Does that bring strong to you or not? That's the Democrats' argument, and I think it's a good argument.

His platform right now is corruption, obviously, because he's U.S. attorney, but that would be the issue he would take into the campaign. I don't know how he would really demonstrate. He has a good understanding or a great background in finances, especially the way the financial messes right now. That's Quirzai's specialty. It was interesting that in the letter that he wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey saying that he was going to leave and that his office released to us and the public, it was a two-page single-space letter with a lot of different themes running through it, prosecution themes, human trafficking, organized crime, anti-terrorism, gang violence. It tried to show the panoply of issues that he has had to deal with as U.S. attorney. I guess, perhaps, anticipating this notion that he's just a one-issue guy. And when he became U.S. attorney seven years ago, the rap against him was he's never been

in court, he's not a prosecutor, and he said, look, I'm a good manager. I know how to run a system. I'm going to come in there, and I'm going to run this well. He can make the same argument as a governor. He also talked administratively how he made the office more efficient, which I took almost as a sign as that can bleed into other areas, such as finances, and chief executive. Who else wants to be the Republican candidate for governor next year? I've put money about Steve Lonegan's going to run. Yeah. Absolutely. Steve Lonegan, former mayor of Bogota, head of Americans for prosperity in New Jersey, and a pretty well-known dad fly to the right of most mainstream moderate New Jersey Republicans. And his supporters were really upset at Chris Christie articles that referred to Christie as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. They were?

They think line up the frontrunner, or they think there's no frontrunner. I think they'll settle for there's no frontrunner, but they like to think they're guys frontrunner. Who else? Rick Merck. Yeah, he's in. Yeah, he's in. From Christie's hometown, it's Mendem. And possibly, though, not likely, John Crowley, the biotech millionaire. Why do you say not? I think that they're going to take a look, and they're going to see Christie run, and they're going to say, you know what, it's just too much of a whole decline. Crowley has a future ahead of him, but maybe it's time to do a little more party building before he can really get enough street cred with Republicans. And the liabilities on Christie, and the liabilities that he brings into the race. George W. Bush, John Ashcroft, he's got those two. That's not Ashcroft as a big one. Yeah, John Ashcroft is a big liable. The Federal Monitorship that he awarded to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, monitoring a medical device manufacturer, a very lucrative contract.

The number 52 million keeps being bandied about. The same day that we did our interview with Christie Tuesday, he, about an hour after the interview was over, he got word that the jury in Trenton had reached a verdict on Wayne Bryant, and he sped down from Newark to Trenton for the verdict, which was guilty on all counts. And with Michael Gallagher, guilty on all but one count, I believe, from Michael Gallagher, the former dean at the School of Fosty Panathic Medicine of UMD and J in South Jersey. Christie did one of his standard post-conviction press conferences, those of us who have covered them have become very familiar with them. And they tend to tell us that the guy who just got convicted is pretty despicable.

Let's hear it. To extort state institutions for personal profit in return for the funding of good and worthwhile programs that serve the poor and the disadvantaged and the needy of our state is simply the most disgusting conduct I've seen by a public official in my seven years as U.S. attorney. Wayne Bryant is a disgrace, and Wayne Bryant is now a federal felon headed for prison. Does Wayne Bryant dusty stand out to you as the worst offender among the famous offenders that Christie has put away? I don't, I, what stands out to me in Wayne Bryant's conviction is that it's a conviction of him.

It's an indictment of the entire way the state budget process was handled for about five years in there. That what he was convicted of, there are a lot of other people in the state house who can look behind him really, that's not allowed. And I think there are a lot of people who are drawing pensions from organizations that receive state funds that are a lot, a lot of people who have that kind of double engagement. Are you saying that Bryant was made a scapegoat for a system? No, I think Wayne was in a unique position as budget chairman, so he left himself vulnerable to charges that he was manipulating the system, and based, I was, I was, frankly, surprised by the evidence in the trial at how, how stark his demands on the institution were portrayed in the, in the trial, I always thought covering this system that things were a little more subtle than that, and everybody knew what they were talking about without anybody saying

it. I mean, the testimony of the trial, people flat out said it. I got the picture during this trial, and with Christie's comments of, you know, Wayne Bryant sitting in his office one day a week with his feet up rooting newspaper. You know, that was the image in my head during this, and I don't know that that's worth 15 years in prison, sitting reading the newspaper in an empty office, you want to weigh in? You know, so many people have said to me, I can point out five people in my office, not because just were reporters, but, you know, in any office, there are people that don't do work. You would think. You know, people have said that to me. So this entire case, I thought the entire time I was there for the 11 weeks, it was up in the air. Oh, you were in court this whole time. Yeah. All right. We need to talk to you. Oh, yeah. You know, to me, it was up in the air the entire time. There was no real smoking gun, you know, and with regard to the Gloucester County charges, Bryant allegedly, or I guess he's guilty now, Bryant went to work or was hired by Gloucester

County and sent associates to do his work. Over five years, he did like 14 hours of work, his associates in his private law firm did more than 3,000. There were other people that did this. I mean, attorneys have said, this is the way it works. You know, your firm gets hired and, you know, everyone shares the work. Now, in this case, Bryant was hired and actually took the pension credits. So I thought that was absolutely going to be, he was going to be acquitted on those charges. When I hear Chris Christie saying that this is the most disgraceful he's seen in his seven years, I think about John Lynch and... I think that was the name that came to my mind. And Sharp James and Bob Januszowski, who took bags of money at the League of Municipalities Conference in Atlantic City, and I wonder if Christie's engaging in a little... Hyperbole pre-election, what do you think? Though he was...

I didn't cover this week's press conference, but it's centered offly similar to when they announced the indictment. What do you mean? He used... The condemnation, the tone of condemnation? Yes. So I... So he really feels that way as what you're suggesting? Or he's an engaged in hyperbole with this whole way along. And that's just getting ready for his post-career announcement. Is he going to be liable or vulnerable during a political campaign to charges of selective prosecution or partisan prosecution? I don't think so. I think he's... He makes... It's a perfectly reasonable excuse to say, look, you know, the Democrats are the party in power. They're the ones that hold these positions. He can go back and point to, you know, Monmouth County where he made all those Republican buses. Yeah. It's been a while that there's been a major Republican taken down, but it's... I don't think we're going to hear... If we hear that, it'll be from sort of groups on the outside. We're not going to hear that from John Corazine.

That's for sure. No, but I think it'll come up as a criticism, and I think you'll hear the name of former Senate President John Bennett banding about because he was in a similar pension dispute day, was under...and your papers were taken of quite the task for patting his pension with a lot of local jobs, some of which, as my recall, were handled by associates. I think people are right, we're going to say, hey, wait a minute. He got a clean bill of health, and Wayne Bryant is on his way to the federal poke. What's up? Also, Burlington County will probably come up with the bridge commission down there in the Republican scene, and maybe some people wondering why I didn't look into Ocean County more. I think it would have been a bigger issue if Wayne Bryant were acquitted than it would have been, I think, a huge issue during the governor's race. I mean, I asked Chris Christie at his press conference following the commission, what he thought about that argument, that this case was selective prosecution. And his response was, he's guilty.

I mean, this guy is guilty, and I don't make people commit crimes, so I think it would have been a very issue. All right. Let's move on. Leonard Lance and John Adler are going to Congress in January. Two people have announced for Lance's Senate seat, the two assembly people from the district, right? Is that right? Yeah, there's a potential, there's Marsha Carol, Michael D'Arty, and there's a potential third, which is freeholder Matt Holt, who's former Senator, U.S. Senator Clifford, cases grandson. He might go in as well. What's his name? Matt Holt. Holt. And is there a way of handicapping this at this point? Well, if Holt gets in, then, yeah, I think it's very beneficial, D'Arty, because he's got, basically, D'Arty is very, very conservative, has Warren County in lockstep behind him. He can count on all their county committee people, which there's slightly fewer than 100 of the county where Carol is from. It's a county committee decision. Right. It's going to be a joint party to pick the interim one, and then there's going to be a

primary after that. So someone goes immediately down to Trenton first. And I think, in this case, if Matt Holt gets in, he splits the 100 in vote, and at least takes enough away from Carol, combined with D'Arty, taking the very conservative votes from there that it does benefit him, I think will be a much tougher fight if Matt Holt doesn't cut in. And who's going to take John Adler's Senate seat? Anybody know? Waiting for the proclamation. Yeah, that's much less of a democratic process. Is it the Democratic Party of Camden County that decides that? Yes. And Lou Greenwald, who is the Lou Greenwald in the same district? Yes, yes. But he has indicated he'd rather stay on as Assembly Budget Committee Chair. Okay. Who wouldn't want to be a Budget Committee Chair? And how about the Adler's chairmanship, the Judiciary Committee Chairmanship in Trenton, anybody hearing anything?

We're here in Paul Sarlow, for all people. Well, at least Dick Cody's pick. Dick Cody's pick, Paul Sarlow, who did not get the Budget Chairmanship, or was it the majority leadership that he wanted? Oh, oh, oh. Oh, yeah, right. He wanted to get in. I also saw something this week that Nick Scatari is another possibility, Senator from Union County. All right, let's move on to the State Budget Crisis. The economy is beginning to take a serious toll on state revenues and local government revenues. The governor was in Atlantic City on Thursday, speaking to the League of Municipalities Conference. He proposed a half pension holiday for local governments, saving local governments and local taxpayers, half a billion dollars this year. He also raised the specter of state worker contributions in some way toward a solution or the budget crisis, so it's possible wage freeze or furloughs. He did say that state workers should share on the sacrifice.

Let's hear him. I think some kinds of support from our public employees will be necessary for us to go from $33.5 billion worth of spending that occurred in 2008 to a budget that will be roughly $30 billion, as we said here today, in 2010. I don't know how we can do that without everyone pitching in. So you're looking for delays or risk, or, you know, it's very clear. It's furloughs, wage freezes, givebacks, and if you're forced, you know, one of the things that we don't have to negotiate, you can put through playoffs. But that takes a lot longer to have a lot of impact and it's not more disruptive to the function even of government. If he proposes rescinding a wage freeze to the unions, go berserk, or do they say we understand that we're in a crisis?

They're already going berserk, and it's going to be interesting too, because there's always this debate about whether they're truly speaking for the rank and file, because we've heard a few rank and file members saying, hey, yeah, times are tough. We shouldn't get this raised. So we may learn a little about who we're really speaking for the rank and file workers. This is a difficult time to be governor, is it not? Yeah, absolutely. We heard, after a course on proposed that half pension holiday in Atlantic City, there was a immediate skepticism that, oh, he's doing this because he's running for governor. And, you know, immediately I thought when he talked about concessions by state workers, now that's not something you do if you're, you know, just thinking about running for governor because that could really hurt him. How's he handling the crisis? I don't think there's any way to handle the crisis. I mean, essentially at the moment, until the global financial world stabilizes, the bus he's driving is already over the cliff and is falling, and he's just...

But he quoted Churchill on Thursday in his prepared remarks to the league. I think the quote was something like when you're, when you're riding through hell. When you're riding through hell, keep going, yes. Yeah, so that, he's indicating he's in hell, that's not worse, much worse than... Is he projecting that he has his hands around the problem? I think he has been, yeah, I think he's been making an effort to do that, certainly. Just one interesting political side note to having state employees give concessions is that I don't know if he will hurt him politically because there's still feeling among a lot of voters and not state employees, but there's always that feeling that state employees are lazy. You know, it's always out there. But there's also the 14th legislative districts where Republicans are going to try to tick at least one assembly seat coming up, and that is really has a really heavy state worker base, and that could hurt the Democratic incumbents there. Who are the incumbents?

Linda Greenstein. Linda Greenstein, D'Angelo. I mean, D'Angelo, a labor guy, a union leader, so... Dusty, you were at the State Investment Council meeting on Thursday, where I guess the headline coming out of it was that a state pension system that once had $81 billion on papers now worth $57 billion or $61, depending on whose number you're buying. What does that mean? That means that the half-holiday that the governor offered the municipalities earlier this week is basically handing a shovel to people who are already way deep in a hole. And it's just, at some point, the pension fund that becomes an unpayable liability. It's not... I don't think it's at that point now, but it's going to require a lot of resources to be aimed at it at some point. Bill Baroney, the State Senator of Republic, and in that 14th Legislative District that is near Trenton, exploded in the papers this morning as wanting hearings and a criminal

investigation of the handling of the pension system, is there legitimate grounds for that or is this partisan posture? The Senator Baroney came on to the Investment Council scene right when a investment into Lehman Brothers was called into question that the State had put, I think it was $300 million or $180 million into Lehman Brothers in June to help prop the company up. The company went bankrupt, they lost $115 million in short order. These have been questioning what the motivation was for helping Lehman Brothers out, whether there were personal connections that led the State to help the company out. The U.S. Attorney's Office is investigating whether Lehman executives sold these investors like the State of Bill of Goods, they told them things improperly.

I think that's the genesis of when he's talking about a criminal investigation. He wants that sort of transaction parsed apart by the Attorney General. Meanwhile, the State Legislature is passing a host of bills to try to improve the business climate and to try to target certain aid to low-income people and people facing foreclosure. Give us your view on what they're trying to do in the Legislature. I think what they're trying to do is help people during this horrible economic time. I think people need the help and they're looking for it. Great. Your thought on what all these bills going through the Legislature that are triggered by the economic crisis? It's impossible to say until we need some time to look and see what their effects are. I mean, they obviously have to do something and they're doing something. Matt, 15 seconds, how's the Legislature responding? They don't want to be pegged with keeping New Jersey last on all these lists of business-friendly

environments coming up in 2009 and 2011. All right. We're out of time. Thanks very much. Great, Matt. Dusty Trish. We'll be back with a roundtable of columnists next week, the holiday week, Friday night at seven and Sunday morning at 10. On this week's edition of On the Record, the Legislative Leadership Panel at the State League of Municipalities Conference, Joe Roberts, Steve Sweeney, Tom Kane, Jr., and Alex DeCrosse Sunday morning at 9 and 11 and Monday morning at 6.30. Both programs are on our digital channel and at njn.net. Premier sponsorship for reporters roundtable with Michael Aaron made possible by PSENG, serving customers, strengthening the business community, and investing in New Jersey's future. With major funding provided by, the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust. Turning brown fields into green fields, enhancing water quality, and protecting New Jersey's water resources.

So, if you got to be out and about during the Friday night Saturday morning time frame, it's dry. We're actually clearing things out, but it is brisk. It is cold, matter of fact, wind gusts 20 to 30 miles an hour Saturday, so it doesn't matter that the sun shines brightly. Sun glasses and an overcoat will pick up more clouds on Sunday, wet weather is in the form of rain, maybe a little bit of wet snow, but it doesn't arrive here until late Monday and Tuesday.