Bill to strip New Jersey comptroller’s powers advances after chaotic, unanimous committee vote

TRENTON — A bill that would cripple New Jersey’s top public corruption watchdog advanced Monday, over the passionate protests of a U.S. senator, the state attorney general, and the pleas of good-government advocates across the state.

The 5-0 vote, moving Senate Bill 4924 out of a state Senate committee, came after an extraordinarily loud and lopsided hearing where the testimony of leading critics was repeatedly interrupted and cut short by committee Chairman James Beach.

Testimony from U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, who cleared his Washington schedule to attend, was limited to three minutes and shoehorned into the waning moments of the marathon hearing, even after at least three people scheduled to give testimony ceded their time to him.

“I’ve been waiting here five and a half hours,” said a frustrated Kim as the committee chairman tried to silence him.

Shot back Beach, the former Camden County clerk: “So what? What makes you so special? Your three minutes are up.”

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Acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh, whose office would be effectively gutted if the bill becomes law, was also given just three minutes to defend his work. “You already demeaned yourself by insulting Senator Kim,” Walsh told the committee chairman.

The new bill would strip the state comptroller of subpoena power and fold much of its duties into the State Commission of Investigation, a quasi-independent state agency created in 1968 to probe organized crime. Supporters say the consolidation would streamline New Jersey’s corruption-fighting machinery and make it more efficient.

The SCI investigators would also have the power to use court-approved wiretaps, a controversial tool rarely used in past state probes. The bill gives SCI wide discretion in using taps. The agency would even be allowed to employ them to investigate law enforcement officers from the state level down to the local prosecutor’s office.

The wiretap provision, bill supporters claim, is designed to deter prosecutorial misconduct and flawed investigations against innocent targets.

But opponents argued that the wiretap power, as written in the law, would only scare off legitimate investigators and lead to more government corruption. What law enforcement officer, they asked, would seriously pursue a corrupt official if they knew a state agency controlled by politicians in the Legislature might wiretap their phones?

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Attorney General Matthew Platkin testified that the wiretaps would unveil “real-time” information about sensitive private matters, including lawyer-client deliberations protected by the U.S. Constitution.

More alarmingly, he said, the SCI investigators who order such surveillance are appointed under the bill by legislative leaders. Powerful politicians in Trenton would thus have influence over what the SCI investigates.

“Lodging this powerful wiretap authority in a legislative agency with leaders that answer directly to members of this body risks compromising the most sensitive law enforcement investigations,” said Platkin. “It’s a brazen attack on the dedicated law enforcement officials who strive to keep our state safe every day.”

Monday’s hearing opened with a presentation by the SCI’s current director, former federal prosecutor Bruce Keller, who was invited by the committee to testify.

Keller, who was apparently exempt from the three-minute rule imposed on others, went back more than a half-century to trace SCI history and praise its crime-fighting pedigree. He said the “elite” agency had a broader mandate and more flexibility than Walsh’s office.

While praising Walsh’s work on rooting out wrongs such as Medicare fraud, he claimed the SCI was “better equipped” to track corruption.

He dismissed fears about the use of wiretaps, pointing out that the SCI at one time decades ago did have the power to use such surveillance. Keller noted that the courts and the attorney general’s office would be required to sign off on any use of wiretaps.

Keller also panned media accounts of the new bill as “unfactual” and said critics misunderstood the SCI’s powers. “Success turns on one thing — accurate, provable facts,” Keller testified. “I’ve spent an entire career dealing in facts.”

Keller’s testimony was followed by a parade of citizens and good-government lobbyists who spoke against the bill. The committee read the names of some five dozen people from across the state who filed as opponents of the bill.

The testimony of Terry Schuster, like many who spoke, was met with wild applause from the multitude of opponents who had gathered for the hearing.

Schuster, head ombudsman for the state Department of Corrections, said Walsh and his investigators exposed corrupt and harmful internal affairs practices in the state prison system. Walsh, he said, was able to establish lasting reforms and a new culture inside the system.

“Independent oversight bodies have to be able to say the truth even when it’s unpopular,” Schuster said to applause from the audience. “He reestablished public trust.”

Laurie Facciarossa Brewer, who advocates for senior citizens as the state’s long-term care ombudsman, cited Walsh’s work in finding widespread fraud in privately run nursing homes. She noted that private corporations run about 80% of New Jersey’s nursing homes, and Walsh created reforms where other state agencies failed.

She said Scutari’s measure, if enacted, would eventually lead to more corruption and more harm to vulnerable people.

“This bill is dangerous,” she said, before being cut off by Beach.

Ravi Bhalla, the reform-minded mayor of Hoboken, was repeatedly interrupted by Beach and told to speak only “on the bill.”

“This whole hearing is a farce, a sham, an insult to the intelligence of the public,” Bhalla said.

Walsh was nominated as state comptroller by Gov. Murphy in 2020. He retains an “acting” title because state lawmakers in Camden County, where Walsh lives, exercised their unwritten privilege to withhold the nomination from approval by a state committee.

Beach, a former Camden County freeholder, said Monday he was “right” to have blocked Walsh’s formal appointment.

Walsh’s six-year tenure as state comptroller has been marked by aggressive investigations that have rooted out some $1 billion in waste and abuse. His focus on public corruption has enraged political insiders who now support cutting back the comptroller’s office.

Earlier this year, Walsh published a long report detailing illegal procurement practices and conflicts of interest in public insurance funds managed by Camden-based Conner Strong & Buckelew, an insurance brokerage long led by South Jersey political boss George Norcross.

Conner Strong denied doing anything wrong regarding the insurance funds and called on lawmakers to investigate Walsh’s office. The firm’s aggressive reaction echoed that of Norcross himself last year, when Attorney General Platkin filed sweeping racketeering charges against the Democratic Party leader and five associates, including his lawyer and his business partners.

The charges, dealing with an alleged Norcross-led conspiracy to grab control of the Camden waterfront, were thrown out of court but are now under appeal. Platkin, like Walsh, has come under widespread criticism by legislative leaders for his aggressive prosecutions.

On Monday, Platkin sparred with an angry Beach during his testimony. The bill, Beach acknowledged, is really directed at Platkin as much as Walsh.

“You are the problem here, you and your leadership,” Beach said. “You’ve been sloppy in a lot of your indictments.”

“All your talking,” Platkin answered, “is about you and your problems. Focus on what matters. Ask me about the bill. This is the first conversation we’ve had in eight years.”

The bill passed the committee and will now head to the Senate floor, where some members of the committee said they would work to change its wiretap language and some other provisions.

Gov. Murphy, a Democrat and lame duck in the final days of his eight-year tenure, has not commented on the bill. In the past, however, Murphy surprised progressives in his own party by signing legislation that weakened open-record and campaign-finance laws.

Before heading back to Washington, Kim, a Democrat who has a history of bucking powerful political insiders from his own party, said the bill’s worst effect would be to further erode sagging public confidence in the government. He compared efforts to hamstring the state comptroller to “lawlessness” in the Trump administration.

“This effort to gut transparency and accountability in our state right now is the wrong move. We need more accountability, more oversight rather than less.”