"Former watchdogs accuse Christie of interfering with state ethics agency"

[applegrove]

Former watchdogs accuse Christie of interfering with state ethics agency

By Salvador Rizzo/The Star-Ledger

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/04/former_watchdogs_accuse_christie_of_interfering_with_state_ethics_agency.html

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A complaint filed with the State Ethics Commission alleged that a member of Gov. Chris Christie’s staff used her state email account to influence her county health department to handle some feral felines on her property in Bordentown. A minor matter, it seemed.

By the time it was over, the executive director of the ethics commission was out of a job at the request of the governor’s office, replaced by one of Christie’s own lawyers, who was later given a judgeship by the governor.

Now, three former commission officials, breaking four years of silence, are accusing the governor’s office of unprecedented interference with an agency set up to be free of political influence. Christie, they say, pushed the agency commissioners to replace the executive director — at a time when she was investigating a member of his own staff — thus crossing a line no other governor had before.

"These moves strike at the heart of the State Ethics Commission in the public’s eye, undermining its independence and integrity," said former Republican state Sen. Bill Schluter, the commission’s onetime vice chairman, adding that to his knowledge it marked the first time a governor had asked for the commission’s top investigator to be removed, or suggested his own candidate lead the agency.


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