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'An insult to the public'

Democrats try to shame Senator Kim, others at Watchdog agency reform bill hearing

By: Charles Stile
Political Stile
USA Today Network

..... As New Jersey's junior U.S. senator Andy Kim is treated with a measure of cordiality and deference in the corridors of the Capitol in Washington D.C.
..... But at the Statehouse in Trenton on December 1, [2025] that deference disappeared. Kim's fellow Democrats made him cool his heels in a committee room. they made him miss a scheduled 1 PM. train back to Washington.
..... "Nobody is special," said state Senator James Beach, the Camden County Democrat, rejecting a plea made by several people in the audience to extend the courtesy of letting him testify early in the hearing against a bill - sponsored by state Senate President Nicholas Scutari - that would destroy the Office of the State Comptroller, perhaps the most effective government watchdog agency in modern state history.
..... The audience was stunned by Beach's curt snub. It turned up the temperature in a hearing room packed mostly with progressive activists bitterly opposed to the legislation, which was introduced on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday and fast-tracked int a December 1 [2025] state Senate committee hearing.
..... But Kim was not the only prominent person forced to wait; so were the acting state comptroller, Kevin Walsh - the "acting" designation since the stat4e Senate has refused to formally confirm him for the past five years - and state Attorney General Matt Platkin, who also came to oppose the legislation as a sham and probably unconstitutional.
..... "This is a slap in the face of your colleagues, and that truly makes you special,: Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla told Beach as he testified before the Senate's State Government, Wagering Tourism and Historic Preservation Committee.
..... "This whole hearing is an insult to the public. The public is not stupid, and they're not going to be fooled by this," said Bhalla, who was elected to the Assembly last month. [11/2025]
..... Bhalla, like several othrs, offered to yield his alloted time so that Kim could testify. Beach was unmoved and ignored him.
..... After sitting for more than four hours, Kim, Platkin and Walsh were finally permitted to testify, prompting the committee room to erupt in extended applause. Yet, after Kim sought to go beyond his allot4ed three minutes for testifying, Beach snapped. "why do you think you're special? You're not."

N.J. Democrats at war with their own machine

..... It was a startling moment in a long, sometimes raucous, combative hearing that served as a stand-in for long-simmering tensions within the New Jersey Democratic Party.
..... The trio of officials who spoke against Scutari's smear on transparency represent a smoldering, grassroots frustration with the state Democratic Party machine's leadership. That leadership is manifested in power amassed in two decades of control of the Legislature - all bolstered by pay-to-play cash and patronage. Insurgent progressive inside Garden State Democratic ranks have long argued that their party machinery has become sclerotic and corrupt and lost touch with the day-to-day needs of average voters.
..... They have been baning away at the clubhouse door, and last year [2024] they nearly took it off it hinges, winning a federal court case that threw out the county-line ballot design in primaries, a key tool that power brokers used to help fortify their power in Trenton.
..... Kim, who filed the winning legal challenge became the new hero of the progressive cause. He vanquished New jersey firs lady Tammy Murphy in a primary and coasted to an easy win in November 2024. But he also won without bending a knee to his party's establishment.
..... Platkin has his own embattled history with the machine. He took a major swing at toppling George Norcorss III, indicting him in June 2024 on charges that Norcross and his allies used his political influence to operate a "criminal enterprise" to take over waterfront real estate in Camden, win government tax credits and strong-arm local businesspeople who stood in his way.
..... The case was dismissed by a Superior Court judge earlier this year. [2025] although it dealt a blow to Platkin's anti-corruption crusade, he was also embraced by the grassroots Democrats for taken on the challenge. the case is being appealed.
..... He was alr4eady largely loathed by machine Democrats in the Legislature from his days as a top aide and counsel to Governor Phil Murphy in his first term, and the challenge made Platkin a permanent parish to the Norcross machine. At one point, Beach publicly scolded Platkin, touching on a litany of controversies under his watch, leading Platkin to push back in a colorful, heated exchange.
..... "I would say that your failed policies and so many black eyes under your leadership of this Attorney General's Office led Senator Scutari to look at what we need to do better," Beach said to Platkin.
..... And then there is Walsh, who also dared to go where few have gone before, whose office issued a report in September [2025] detailing overlapping conflicts between conner Strong & Buckelew, a health insurance firm founded by Norcross, and PERMA risk Management.
..... The state controllers described the operation as an "unauthorized covert takeover of public function by a private entity." Conner Strong & Buckelew called the report "inflammatory" and politically motivated. But Walsh's office -cerated as a independent entity to probe abuse of the public trust at any level of New Jersey government - has rattled the cages of the Democratic Party elite up and down the state, including Scutari, the Senate president and sponsor of the bill.

Scutari is Norcross' weapon of retribution

..... Given this backdrop, the bill that cleated the state Senate committee with a 5-0 vote on December, [2025] was largely seen as retribution - the Empire of Democratic Party Machine power striking back. Their play? Payback dressed up in the guise of "streamlining" watchdog agencies.
..... Scutari's bill would basically mover the functions of the State comptroller's Office into the moribund State Commission of Investigation, which was created more than 50 years ago to ferret out the ties of organized crime to state legislators. But just last year, [2024] this "gem: of a law enforcement agency, as its current executive director described it at the state Senate committee hearing, was in a scandal-scarred shambles after an Asbury Park Press report that found that its full-time executive director was holding an out-of-state teaching job in Washington, D.C.
..... Scutari described the bill as an attempt to bolster the power of the SCI by consolidating the two agencies and returning the State Comptroller's Office to its original mission of rooting out Medicaid fraud. But except for the four other legislators on the panel and about a half dozen supporters of the measure, the activists who packed the room were certainly not buying it.
..... The move would place the State Comptroller's Office, protected by law as an independent arm of the execute branch, mainly under the control of legislative appointees and turn its workforce of 130 into "at will" employees who could be fired at any time.
..... That could mean investigators would be less likely to target the politically connected, fearing that it could lead to their firing. It would be a setback to a Walsh-led agency that has targeted sacred political cows - just as it uncovered massive Medicaid fraud at for-profit nursing homes and the abuse of police union courtesy cards by the politically connected.
..... "The reality is that SCI can return to its glory days ... but it doesn't need to come at the cost of undermining the executive branch's watchdog at a time when we have been more effective, more prolific, including in investigations," Walsh told the committee.
..... The Scutari-authored bill also seems strangely out of step with the political zeitgeist. Voters in New Jersey registered their clear, overwhelming disgust with he conduct of President Donald Trump's administration - it weaponizing of the Department of Justice and its firing of a slew of internal government watchdogs, hired to root out costly fraud and abuse.
..... "How can we legitimately criticize the lawlessness that we and the district's [attack] of transparency and accountability down in DC if we are taking actions in our own state capital that will weaken safeguards her at home?" Kim asked the committee.
..... Voters also made it clear that they are concerned about the rising cost of living - "affordability" is the new catchword. Scutari believes the proposed, consolidated entity will save taxpayers millions, but Walsh has said his office recouped more than $530 million in taxpayer money over the last four fiscal years, 12 times the amount spent by his office over the same time period.

A new front on Scutari's war on transparency

..... And for many critics, the bill was a sequel to other successful Scutari-led efforts in recent years to weaken the state's public records act and defang the campaign finance watchdog while allowing of a cascade of new campaign cash to pour into the system. This new bill is another dimming of the light of transparency.
..... Despite the anxiety, the bill cleared its first hurdle, but it faces an uncertain future in the Assembly. Murphy, who has reappointed Walsh twice despite his failing to win Senat4e confirmation, has remained silent. Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill hasn't taken a position.
..... Could this be the start of a long period of lame-duck negotiations by the transactional Scutari? If so, there will be a slew of sensitive, lame-duck legislation heading toward Murphy's desk before he leaves office.

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