Republican Legislators Urged to Break With Governor Christie And Defend Clean Water

Will Republicans Support A Legislative Veto of Christie DEP Water Rules?

A Test for Senate Moderates Like Bateman, Kean, Allen, & Beck

“I spent the last 5 years dismanting the overreach that she [NJ DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson] did in New Jersey and our environmental protection area.  ~~~~ Gov. Chris Christie, Iowa, 3/7/15

On multiple occasions, NJ Republican legislators have backed Governor Christie and blocked Democratic efforts to over-ride the Governor’s vetoes of bills passed by the Democratically controlled Legislature.

As a result, Democrats have been frustrated and unable to muster super-majority veto over-ride votes.

But they may have a little payback opportunity with their own veto power.

The Constitutional power granted to the Legislature to veto State Agency regulations radically changes the political dynamics and institutional power compared to the Legislature’s power to over-ride a Governor’ veto of a passed bill.

Under a rarely used Constitutional legislative veto provision, Democrats need only simple majorities in both houses to veto the Governor’s regulatory initiatives.

The Governor plays no role – the Legislature can veto the Governor’s regulations without his approval.

The vote on the Resolution that would veto Christie DEP water rules released by the Senate Environment Committee on Monday followed partisan lines.

With pro-environment Senator Bateman absent from the Committee- Bateman has shown independence and broken with the Governor – Republican Senator Thompson was the only NO vote.

So the question becomes: Will the Republican party as a whole elevate partisan loyalty to the Governor and abandon clean water?

Will Republicans with aspirations for running for Governor back a deeply unpopular Governor Christie and fail a litmus test and walk away from the popular issue of protection of the environment and clean water?

Inland and coastal flooding is a statewide concern, as it opposition to dwindling open space and support for clean water. A lot of Republican voters in Hunterdon County – and PennEast pipeline opponents – support clean water. Ditto voters in Monmouth and Morris County.

So, today, we challenged the Republicans to do the right thing, see:

Dear Senators Thompson and Bateman:

I am writing to urge your consideration and to clarify my testimony in response to Senator Thompson’s statement in defense of his “NO” vote on SCR 180 last Monday at the Senate Environment Committee hearing.

I am including Senator Bateman because he was not present at the hearing and will need this information to vote on the Senate floor, and hopefully convince his republican colleagues to support the Resolution.

Senator Thompson opposed the Resolution because he said he was not convinced that supporters of SCR 180 had provided adequate arguments regarding alleged conflicts with legislative intent.

It was my view that testimony by Jeff Tittel of NJ Sierra Club and Mike Pisauro of Stonybrook Watershed had provided adequate testimony in that regard, so I did not address the legislative intent argument in my testimony.

Later testimony by Eliot Ruga of the Highlands Coalition made it clear that the DEP’s proposed rule would weaken protections for streams in the Highlands planning area.

Instead, I focused on tracing the regulatory history and explaining why the DEP’s proposed riparian mitigation credit, trading, and banking scheme lacked any legislative authorization and was ultra vires.

It is ironic that Governor Christie withdrew from RGGI on the basis that the program constituted a tax on NJ businesses with no corresponding environmental benefit, and then his DEP proposed a massive statewide tax on development that harms the environment.

If you would like to understand those arguments, please hit this link to review that argument.

Christie DEP Flood Credit Trading Scheme Is an Illegal Tax On Development

http://www.wolfenotes.com/2015/10/christie-dep-flood-credit-trading-scheme-is-an-illegal-tax-on-development/

So, to address Senator Thompson’s concerns, today I submitted the analysis below into the record on SCR 180. I ask that Chairman Smith enter this correspondence into the record as well for the benefit of all legislators.

It lays out the legislative intent in the various statutes that DEP relied on to authorize the proposed rules.

So we thought we’d draft an outline of the major provisions of the DEP rule we see as “inconsistent with legislative intent”. This is just an outline – we omit the specific regulatory citations, although these can readily be determined by reviewing the Table of Citations on page 27 and in Table 11.2 on page 690.

(the remained of the letter follows this prior post on legislative intent)