Legislative Sausage
By Albert B. Kelly
It is said that there are two things in life you never want
to see actually being made; the first is sausage and the second is legislation.
Being familiar with both, I can say that the process of making either one is
best left to the imagination.
Setting sausage aside, the legislative process can be
mind-numbing, ugly, informative, divisive, frustrating, and rewarding all that
the same time. Regardless of the process, the final product impacts many lives
in a multitude of ways.
That’s why I was both honored and humbled a week before
Thanksgiving as I assumed my post as President of the New Jersey League of
Municipalities (NJLM). The humbling part is that I will be working alongside a
highly talented and extremely intelligent group of colleagues.
The other humbling piece is simply the sheer volume of
legislation that moves in any one session. In the two-year legislative session
that ended in January 2016, there were just over 9,000 bills introduced in the
NJ State Legislature.
To me, that’s a hefty volume of bills and the NJLM views
every one through the lens of municipal government and the impact each has down
on the street where our lives unfold in the 565 cities, boroughs, towns,
townships, and villages where we live, work, and play.
A certain number of those bills in the 216th Legislature,
namely 583, were passed by both houses of the Legislature and ultimately made
the trip over to the governor for his consideration. Out of these, 419 were
actually signed into law.
In total, out of the roughly 9,000 bills put forth during
the 216th, no less than 2,247, or approximately 25% of everything that
introduced, were deemed as impacting the League and were thus monitored by the
League one way or the other.
Out of the 2,247 that made it onto the League’s radar, 1,193
got an official response; 636 were supported and 557 were opposed and the
remaining 1,054, the League did their due diligence and either took no position
or they simply kept an eye on the bill.
This “monitoring” is not all that uncommon because out of
all the legislation that gets put forth in any given session, not all of it has
a direct impact on municipalities. However, some legislation might have an
indirect impact or be amended in such a way that it becomes a factor.
If I understood the breakdown on the 216th Legislature
correctly, 51 bills that the League staked out a position on passed both Houses
of the Legislature and ultimately took the journey over to the Governor.
Of these, 29 bills supported by the League were signed into
law during the 216th, 7 bills opposed by the League were signed into law, 9
bills supported by the League were either vetoed or conditionally vetoed by the
Governor, and 6 bills opposed by the League were either vetoed or conditionally
vetoed by the Governor.
No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of legislative
sausage and it covers a number of diverse issues and areas that impact our
lives here in the state. My guess is that the future will see a higher volume
of legislation (and possibly sausage) cranked out and some of it will
potentially have a profound impact on our lives.
But here’s the thing to remember about the various levels of
government; stuff rolls downhill as it does in most other areas of life. That
means that the interests of state government are not necessarily those of
municipal government and the same is try when it comes to the federal level.
If there is a burden to pass along, it invariably gets
passed from federal to state on down to municipal, whether it involves unfunded
programs, tax increases, cuts in service or whatever. So there is the normal
elbowing that takes place at all levels.
Beyond that, as I have often maintained, it is municipal
government where the most innovative and creative governing gets done. Not all
of it can be scaled up, but we still need the tools to do what’s necessary
precisely because there is no layer of government between municipal and the
street.
In that sense, we’re on the front lines and like the making
of sausage, governing at this level is not always pretty, but it’s necessary
and we must do it with the best interests of our communities in mind. I look
forward to working hard for our citizens in the year ahead.