Look beyond the first symptom
Trenton lawmakers are falling all over themselves to make it look like they are outraged by the excesses of the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC) and unwilling to let it continue – so Scott Rumana wants the state to take over the patronage mill.
But it isn’t as if the PVSC is alone in its problems. Two months ago, I tried shining a spotlight on the Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority. And, it should be pointed out, the RVSA’s Board of Commissioners is no less politically connected than the PVSC’s Board. That, in itself, is neither surprising nor alarming. After all, these are appointed positions, so you’d expect them to have some political connections.
Beyond that, it is not impossible that a group of political appointees, with no real knowledge of how sewerage works, could still manage to do a decent job in managing a sewerage authority. All that is needed is an appointee who wants to serve honorably and well and will do whatever study is needed to get up to speed on the ins and outs of sewerage. Technical knowledge can always be borrowed from in-house engineers or consultants.
The problem is that we have probably hundreds of these hidden governments in New Jersey. Authorities and Commissions and Boards and whatnot that wield considerable power and influence our daily lives in ways that we aren’t even aware. Every decision they make impacts our property taxes…but we never know it because they don’t send a bill to us, the consumer. They send the bill to the municipality, who passes it along to us as part of a unified tax bill.
It’s as close to a law of human behavior as is possible to determine – if you give people power and money and never institute oversight; then you are going to have problems, in one way or another. Nepotism, patronage, extravagance, and outright corruption are only symptoms. If any improvement is ever to be made; then we have to get out of the idea that we just need more hidden government to watch hidden government.
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