Christie once again touts anticorruption plan

Less than two weeks after federal agents arrested 44 people - including three mayors, two assemblymen, and five rabbis - Republican gubernatorial candidate Christopher J. Christie has reintroduced his anticorruption plan.

"To truly fix New Jersey's corruption problem, we must bring real change to our government and repair the reputation of our broken state," Christie, a former U.S. attorney, said in a statement yesterday.

Christie would push for ethics laws that require legislators to fully disclose their outside jobs as well as their clients. He said that, for example, legislators who do business with developers and unions should disclose their private interests when sponsoring and voting on bills that affect their clients.

When public officials are convicted of corruption charges, they immediately would forfeit their public pensions, as well as control of their campaign war chests, under Christie's plan.

He would further curtail dual office holding by removing the grandfather clause in the law that allowed some members to keep their second elected jobs. Some legislators still serve as elected municipal or county officials.

And he would take on dual public employment, making people choose between their full-time government jobs or salaried elected positions.

Christie also would try to amend the state constitution to allow citizens to change state policies with statewide votes, as voters do in many Western states, including California.

Christie's plan rests on government transparency, he says, and he would make government records available through user-friendly and easily searched databases.

Christie introduced his plan in the primary, but it was drowned out by complaints from his opponent Steve Lonegan and Democrats over contracting while Christie was the U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

Then, his opposition was trying to tarnish his image as a corruption-buster whose office secured guilty pleas or convictions from 135 politicians.

Yesterday was no different.

As Christie was in Paramus discussing his ethics plan, Democratic Gov. Corzine was releasing a television commercial reminding voters that Christie supported President George W. Bush. The ad also brings up contracts he awarded, including one to his old boss, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, and contends that Christie is pushing a Bush-like economic plan.

Asked about Christie's ethics plan, Corzine dismissed it yesterday as "a rehash of what we have already laid down in the legislature."

For his part, Christie labeled Corzine's efforts to curb corruption "timid."

Christie has refrained from discussing at length the sweeping July 23 arrests that netted politicians accused of taking bribes from an undercover informant, rabbis accused of involvement in an international money-laundering operation, and one person accused of offering to traffic in kidneys.

The day after the busts, however, Christie started running an ad that touted his background as a U.S. attorney.