Longtime Christie critics are opposing a bill one referred to as Christie's "revenge bill."
TRENTON -- A pair of Democratic lawmakers who led the charge in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal that damaged Gov. Chris Christie's political ambitions are now fighting the governor's push to pull legal ads from newspapers.
State Sen. Loretta Weinberg and Assemblyman John Wisniewski say Christie's punitive motives are behind the bill that quietly resurfaced Monday. The bill would dismantle a state law requiring governments, businesses and individuals to publish legal notices in printed newspapers. The notices would be published on local websites if the measure is approved.
"People who hear this, who know the governor and have seen him in action, expect it as, 'Yeah, seems like something he'd do,'" Weinberg (D-Bergen) said. "I haven't heard anybody shocked at the premise that the governor might be behind this for punitive reasons."
Wisniewski, who is a declared 2017 gubernatorial hopeful, called the legislation Christie's "revenge bill."
The legislation (S2855/A4429) has bipartisan support and sponsors in both the Assembly and Senate. However, an advocate for municipalities confirmed Tuesday Christie is behind the push to fast track it through the Legislature.
Christie making legal ad bill push
The bill is an update of a six-year-old proposal that would allow government agencies and municipalities to instead post notices on websites -- a move proponents say could save municipalities money. The New Jersey Press Association says the bill would deliver a blow to Garden State newspapers and many question if the bill would save towns anything.
With the last voting session of the year scheduled for Monday, the bill is slated for hearings Thursday. Christie, who has had a rocky relationship with the state's press, is strongly supporting its passage.
"I can think of a dozen of other issues if you want to save money," Weinberg said. "Nobody, to my knowledge at least, has come up with the figure that municipalities spend on these annually."
The governor's office said more than $80 million is paid annually by taxpayers and private businesses to publish legal notices. It based its figure off of "an internal tally of a sampling for daily newspapers," but didn't say which newspapers, how many it sample nor did they provide any additional documents to support the figure.
"Once again the team of Weinberg and Wisniewski don't let the facts get in the way of their George Washington Bridge obsession," Christie spokesman Brian Murray said in a statement. "This legal notices reform bill, which will save taxpayers and citizens going through foreclosure $80 million annually, was first proposed in 2010, not 2016."
But the NJPA called the $80 million cited by the governor's office "a joke." White called the figure erroneous, just as the NJPA did six years ago when the administration said $70 million was spent by municipalities and private entities.
The NJPA says $20 million is spent annually on the notices -- $8 million by taxpayers through the government and $12 by private corporations. The figures come from a 2010, White said, noting there hasn't been an rate increase on legal ads in more than 3 decades.
"It's interesting that they need to add $10 million," White said.
And numbers provided by the New Jersey State League of Municipalities show a much different picture of what the Christie administration claims.
In 2015, 147 municipalities in the state paid a total of $1,051,085 in legal ad costs, averaging $7,150 per town, according to the state's league of municipalities.
The league didn't have full figures because not all of the state's 565 municipalities responded to its survey, the group said.
League officials said they conducted the survey at Christie's request.
"This is nothing more than a politically motivated crackdown on the press in New Jersey," Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) said.
Gov. Chris Christie. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) "Governor Christie is seeking retribution for the public service New Jersey's newspapers provided with their fair, in-depth reporting during the Bridgegate scandal," he said. "This revenge bill is transactional politics at its worst."
Both lawmakers also say the fear the cuts that could follow within New Jersey newsrooms if the bill advances.
"It will serve to shut down one part of the news reporting world," Wisniewski said. "You'll have a lot less coverage of what's going on in state government."
Newspaper advocates say the revenue loss could translate to 200 to 300 fewer newspaper jobs and spell the end of some titles.
The bill's advocates say it will save taxpayers money by conforming to the times, and they pushed back against any suggestion that the bill goes beyond a desire to save municipalities money.
But the state's league of municipalities has only begun its technical review of the legislation and couldn't provide public-private breakdowns of various legal notices for municipalities, nor could they say how fees would be established for municipalities that now get them from private legal ads.
George White, executive director of the New Jersey Press Association, said the bill would make residents comb through individual towns' websites for notices rather than open the newspaper or search online at the NJPA's website at www.njpublicnotices.com.
"While it may seem simple as a money-saving idea, the bill is a public policy fiasco. It's not even clear governments would actually save money given the cyber-security, technical, administrative, and customer-service responsibilities each must take on," White said.
The legislation quietly resurfaced at the same time a bill is moving through the Legislature that would allow Christie to profit from a book deal. Its tied to a bill that would increase lawmakers' staff salaries from $110,000 to $140,000, and increase judicial staff salaries by 4 percent.
Officials at NJ Advance Media, which provides content for NJ.com, The Star-Ledger and other affiliated newspaper, said 7 percent of total company revenue now comes from legal advertising. Of that amount, nearly 80 percent is private sources. The rest comes from public sources -- municipal, county and state government agencies.
Weinberg and Wisniewski co-chaired a legislative committee that investigated Christie's administration over the Bridgegate scandal. The committee's investigation is what prompted the release of the infamous "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" email sent by Christie's former deputy chief of staff to a top-ranking Port Authority official.
In November, Bridget Anne Kelly, the author of the email, and Bill Baroni, Christie's top appointee to the Port Authority, were found guilty of federal crimes for their roles in the scheme.
Christie, who was never directly tied to the political revenge scheme, has said the scandal hurt him politically. The governor has said it likely played a role in him being passed over as President-elect Donald Trump's choice of running mate.
A Christie spokesman didn't immediately respond to the Weinberg and Wisniewski's attack against him over the bill.
Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or on Facebook.