THE STATE’s favorite chairman, Scott Rumana is clearly suffering from foot-in-mouth disease as chronicled by the Record’s Charles Stile. Seeking to curry favor with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Rumana has become a vocal opponent of the excessive salaries paid to employees at the Passaic Vally Sewerage Commission. Unfortunately for Rumana, it turns out that his Godfather, a one Robert Roe, works at PVSC as a consultant with a $10,000 a month MINIMUM retainer. …

As we look ahead to the coming year of county races, we at THE STATE thought it worth while to see where all the counties are in terms of fundraising. As you can see there is clearly a big difference in the numbers between the GOP and the Dems.

For the Democrats, the big winners are Passaic County at $711,445, Camden County at $333,083 and Union County which has $307,225 cash on hand.

The GOP’s leaders are in Morris County, which has $42,337 cash on hand followed by Monmouth County with $28,362.14 cash on hand. …

THE STATE thanks Art Gallagher at More Monmouth Musings and shouts out NJ Tax Revolution

State Senators Raymond Lesniak, a powerful machine-backed politician if there ever was one, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., both from Union County, have recently joined in a private business venture led by longtime Democratic political operative Adam Zellner.

In today’s economy, word of any new business opening its doors in the Garden State should be welcome; nevertheless, this deal stinks worse than the stenches emanating from the infamous Bayway Refinery!…

This week, the NJ State Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion upholding the ability of a school administrator to search a student’s car parked on school property using a reasonableness standard of proof, rather than more stringent probable cause standard that would apply to a police offer search. The decision matches numerous decisions issued by plenty of state courts throughout the country, and supported by the U.S Supreme Court’s decision in the seminal search and seizure case at schools, which coincidentally arose from a New Jersey case back in the early 1980s. …

THE STATE: what began as an online experiment between a group of friends fell by the wayside as our editing staff split up for the year. Some of our people went to work for then Governor Corzine, some went to work for now Governor Christie. Some of our people joined law firms and …

Why have prosecutors refused to return Karen Golding’s computers and blackberry, which were seized at the time of her arrest in February 2006?

Golding contends that her computer contains evidence of a three-year long sexual relationship between her and Joe Cryan as well as incriminating and damaging information regarding possible illegal activities committed by Cryan.

Therein lies the rub…

GOP Assembly Leader Alex DeCroce chose the anniversary of Pearl Harbor to drop a bomb on his caucus. They had assembled last December 7th to hear from Lt. Governor-Elect Kim Guadagno. DeCroce misplaced the script handed to him by the ever present Rick Wright, and mistakenly picked-up a nearby copy of “Horse & Hound”. Reading from it, he said: “Isn’t she the prettiest thing,” or words to that effect. Hilarity failed to ensue. …