Corzine's 11th Hour Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) appointments - Stack watches idle and abstains on this important vote

What happened with the PERC nominations....

The Senate confirmed Adrienne Eaton, Paula Voos, and Sharon Krengel in
the last day of Corzine's term to the Public Employee Relations
Commission (PERC).  Corzine withdrew Ira Stern's nomination I believe,
in part, because of the letter writing campaign promoted by Council
President Cunningham asking our legislators to block the nominations.

This is good and bad.  A) we won't have a union rep as the Chairman
(Corzine nominated Stern, a union rep, for the role of Chairman).
Christie has to appoint a union member to the panel but he can appoint
the union rep to a regular Commissioner's role and head the panel with
someone with a more balanced view.  B)  By appointing 3 not 4,
Christie can appoint 3 rather than 2 now as there are 3 others in
holdover status.  The term of the last Corzine appointee on the panel
of the 7, expires in March 2011.  We will just have to wait until
March of 2011 for Christie to be able to put in his 4th appointee to
create a Christie taxpayer friendly panel.

We should get Christie to make appointment ASAP ie not sit on it as
Corzine did.  By doing so, we would have a taxpayer inclusive view for
Hoboken's next round of contract negotiations.

We will have a chance to get to know who ever Christie appoints -
observe their POV regarding the burden of proof needed to change the
pattern of bargaining.  We can watch appeals and have an idea if we
should try to immediately push our next set of contracts to
arbitration or not.

I got the list of how those on the Judiciary Committee voted.  All
appointments have to go through the Judiciary Sub-Committee before
going to the Senate for confirmation.  The Judiciary Committee could
have held these nominations in sub-committee until after Christie's
inauguration and in my opinion that was the ethical thing to do.

The reason why a Governor gets to make these appointments is so that
he has appointees in policy positions to help him deliver his platform
and vision.  This is presumably why people voted him in.  So denying a
Governor this ability in my opinion is denying the will of the people.

One would hope that if a Governor is over stepping his bounds, the
Senate would step in and stop him.  Let’s be real about what Corzine
did. Three nominees were confirmed and they were in office for a total
of 7 days of Corzine’s term.  It meets the letter of the law but not
the intention. He artificially extended his failed platform into
Christie’s term.

Six out of seven PERC Commissioners were in holdover status which
means their terms had expired already.  Almost all of them had terms
that expired in late 2007 or early 2008, so Corzine’s statement that
he couldn’t put these appointments through earlier because the
legislature was stymied for 6 months by the election process is as my
Father would say is bolderdash.  If Corzine appointed these 6 when
their terms expired they would have  expired in the first 6 months to
a year of Christie’s term.  This action was undermining of the will of
the people.

Senator Stack abstained from the vote.  I spoke with him at length
about the importance and impact of the PERC on property taxes - how
public employee costs constitute 55% of local budget, Police and Fire
constitute 70% of the employee base so contracts under the PERC
constitute 38.5.% of our municipal taxes.  I asked him to not only vote
against moving these nominations to the floor, I asked him to make a
passionate plea to his Judiciary Committee colleagues.  We needed 7
no votes to hold these nominations in the Judiciary committee.  By
abstaining, Stack sat there idle not helping the cause even though he
absolutely knew the consequences.  The purpose of sub-committees is
to vet issues and to make sure they can bring the facts to the floor. 
Abstain??? Why? He acted in cowardess!!!!  In my opinion, this is a serious
failure to lead.  Isn't that we elect people - to lead?

Here is the vote:

Cowards:
    Those who voted to allow these nominations to go to the floor:
         Paul Sarlo
         John Girgenti
         Nia Gill
         Ray Lesniak
         Bob Smith
         Bill Baroni
         Chris Bateman
         Gerald Cardinale
    Those who abstained
         Brian P Stack
         Lorretta Weinberg

Statesmen (those who voted no):
Jen Beck

Absent (someone too busy to do the job he was elected to do):
Joe Kyrillos

Senators Buono and Smith could have blocked these through senatorial courtesy once they got to the floor but they did not.

Please spread the word. Everyone should know who is responsible for
selling NJs future.