Business as Usual: Bipartisan Graft

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!

Don’t get us wrong; legislators are entitled to make a living outside of politics. Indeed, New Jersey taxpayers would benefit if their legislators had more private sector experience. But there are some things about this particular deal that we’re finding hard to swallow.

The business venture, New Brunswick-based Greener By Design, is an alternative-energy startup. You’re probably thinking: Great news! These fine gentlemen want to help the environment, what could be wrong with that? Plenty.

For a start, the renewable energy, or green energy, field is regulated and heavily subsidized by federal and state governments. The conflicts of interest are almost too numerous to list.

According to Greener By Design’s website, the startup will, among other things, specialize on solar energy, brownfield remediation, public relations (a Trenton euphemism for lobbying without registering as a lobbyist), and federal government relations (read: lobbying).

We don’t fault Zellner for trying to cash in on his wife’s connections to US Senator Frank Lautenberg, so we’ll put the federal government relations issue aside and address the others.

According to an article on solar energy in the January 18, 2010 NJBIZ Journal:

Solar arrays and other renewable-energy installations on landfill or brownfield sites in New Jersey were in the spotlight this month with the state Assembly’s passage of a bill that would provide local governments and counties with up to $5 million in matching grants to convert polluted sites for use in renewable-energy production.

The bill unanimously passed both houses and was signed into law (P.L.2009, c.303) on January 17, 2010 with little fanfare by lame duck Governor Jon S. Corzine.

Who sponsored the Senate version of this bill? None other than… Ready for it?… Senator Raymond Lesniak. We couldn’t make this up folks!

The types of projects funded by this legislation are precisely the types of projects Greener By Design would pursue.

As for brownfield remediation, it is a highly regulated, very long and tedious process whereby success includes working closely with the state Department of Environmental Protection, an agency funded by the legislature and known to be swayed by political pressures. Keep this in the back of your mind: A recent Auditor column appearing in the Star-Ledger professed that: “For about $100,000 each, Lesniak and Kean each took 10 percent passive stakes in the firm” (January 31, 2010).

Now, imagine this: You’re a career bureaucrat working at NJDEP and you are reviewing an application from Greener By Design that could yield a huge profit for its investors, but you find a problem that could set the project back and cost time and money for the company to remedy. Won’t you be relieved to know that Lesniak and Kean are merely passive investors?

After actually having read the New Jersey General Assembly’s Code of Ethics , we are fairly certain that such a scenario would be a violation of the law. However, since Kean “the reformer” and Lesniak are such powerful figures, we highly doubt that the state would take any action.

We could go on of course. Allowing state legislators who are influential in selecting their parties’ respective candidates for federal office to invest in an outfit that lobbies federal officials is troubling in and of itself. Especially for firms like Greener By Design that handle “public relations”, it is important to remember that the public relations described on the website consist of chasing ever larger government subsidies. Oh yeah, back to the issue of government subsidies. Just how lavish are state subsidies? Consider the following in the January 2, 2010 edition of the Press of Atlantic City:

As the national economy struggles, one industry is booming in New Jersey: renewable energy.

Buoyed by some of the nation’s most generous financial incentives and relatively little regulation, New Jersey’s renewable energy industry — particularly solar power — has exploded with activity.

… With a solar certificate, an operator of a solar facility can earn 60 cents per kilowatt hour, said Joe Isabella, director of the Vineland Municipal Electric Utility. In the traditional wholesale energy market, a kilowatt is worth about 6 cents.

…Add to that a new 30 percent federal tax credit for renewable energy projects and New Jersey’s similar performance-based incentives for wind and biomass-based energy, and it’s clear why it is not merely the environmentally minded who are looking at the New Jersey market. Now, there’s money to be made.

That’s right, thanks to state subsidies, solar power in New Jersey sells for 10 times the going rate of traditional energy. No wonder our state is broke! No wonder Kean and Lesniak want in on the action!

This deal is especially troubling for Republicans who have pounded democrats repeatedly in recent years for issues of corruption in government.

Kean’s entire 2006 US senatorial bid against US Senator Bob Menendez was based on depicting Mendez as the quintessential corrupt Hudson County politician. After all the lectures from the Kean family on civility, on ethics, on responsible governance, this is what the people of New Jersey get: business as usual.

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