WASHINGTON, September 24, 2004 — As fierce struggles erupted this year in at least three states over whether elected officials can hold second government jobs, an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity shows the practice is widespread.

In all, 10 percent of state legislators who reported their finances held separate jobs with one or more government agencies in 2001, the last year for which data was available. When spouses' salaries were included, that figure jumped to 19 percent. Neither figure includes legislators' non-government jobs.

In New Jersey, fully one third of the legislators drew income from other public employment—44 percent when spouses' salaries were added. Delaware ranked second, with 23 percent of legislators or their spouses.

In another nine states, between 18 and 20 percent of legislators reported holding other public employment.

The most common secondary source of employment was the local government: almost four percent of state legislators reported such jobs. They were followed closely by public school employees (three percent), and public college and university employees, 2.5 percent. Just over one percent worked for the state or federal government.

When their spouses were included, seven percent of legislators were plugged into public schools and 5.8 were connected to local government.

The analysis included salaries paid for employment with federal, state, local or tribal governments, public schools and universities, and other public agencies in the 47 states in which financial disclosures are required. It excluded the 5.4 percent of legislators in the 47 states who never disclosed their finances for 2001, as well as spouses' salaries in the 11 states which do not require their disclosure. It only covered paid employment, potentially missing some influential board and commission seats that are uncompensated.

The government gig

Across the country this year, legislators with more than one government gig have been criticized for raiding the public payroll, serving conflicting masters, or even violating their constitutions.

Many states have rules against "double-dipping"—drawing more than one salary or pension payout—and put restrictions on legislators' contracts with the government.

Most states also have some limit on dual government employment in their constitutions. In at least 38 states, the constitution prohibits legislators from holding specific offices, or any that are categorized as positions of trust or profit.

Still, states vary widely in the numbers and combinations of political and civil service jobs they allow a single person to have. For example, Louisiana prohibits an individual in a statewide elected office from holding any other elected post or employment in state or local government, with a few exceptions. Federal law is also strict. In New Jersey, on the other hand, a 1971 law explicitly protects a person's right to hold simultaneously state, county and municipal elected or appointed office.

Some legislators have found that deciding what is legal—or politically tenable—can be tough:

• In Nevada, Secretary of State Dean Heller and Attorney General Brian Sandoval tried in vain this year to persuade the Supreme Court that to preserve the separation of powers, it should force at least four legislators who are also state employees to drop one of their jobs.
  
  
• A West Virginia legislator lost his post as chair of the House Education Committee amid controversy over "double dipping" and alleged conflicts between his elected office and his regular job as community specialist and grant writer for the Hampshire County public schools. The Ethics Commission and other officials are investigating whether Delegate Jerry Mezzatesta (D-Hampshire) solicited state grant money for the schools despite being restricted from doing so and fabricated exonerating letters.
  
  
• Dual office-holding was also caught up in a raucous debate over political ethics in New Jersey this year. Although the Legislature passed a 23-point ethics reform plan, it did not restrict legislators from holding second offices —and the Senate even turned back attempts to have a commission study the issue. Assemblyman Michael J. Panter (D-Monmouth and Mercer Counties), a freshman who sponsored a bill that would have banned state legislators from holding another elected office, told the Center that the practice leads to "inherent conflicts of interest." For example, he said, a legislator-mayor may favor his or her home municipality over others in distributing "a finite amount of state resources."
  
  

Meanwhile, this November Rhode Island voters will decide whether to abolish the legislature's long-standing authority to seat its own members, or their appointees, on dozens of state boards and commissions.

Rhode Island Senator Michael Lenihan, who shepherded the initiative onto the ballot , said it is primarily intended to strengthen what he said was a historically weak executive branch. It should also improve legislative oversight of the boards and prevent lawmakers from using them to hand out favors, Lenihan told the Center.

Legislators are now struggling to decide how the boards should be reconstituted without their appointments.

Political cannonballs

Union City, New Jersey, just opened a new swimming pool with a retractable roof. To Brian Stack, the pool is a shimmering example of how constituents can benefit when one leader holds two offices.

Stack divides his time between Trenton, where he serves as a New Jersey Assemblyman from the 33rd district, and Union City, where he has been the mayor since 2000.

Stack says it was his dual positions which allowed him to pull together state and county funds to build the pool.

"If I wasn't a mayor, or if I wasn't an assemblyman, I never would have gotten those funds," he said.

Stack is only one of at least 22 New Jersey legislators who also have other elected positions in county or other local government, according to reports from Gannett New Jersey newspapers.

He acknowledged that the arrangement also works to his political advantage.

To get to the Assembly, the mayor first had to wrest the Democratic nomination away from an incumbent legislator who was running for re-election.

"If I wasn't a strong mayor, would they have given [the nomination] to me? I doubt it," he says. At the time, Stack was also serving as a freeholder, an elected county legislator, but he kept a promise to quit that post upon his election to the Assembly, a spokeswoman said.

Defenders of dual office-holding often argue that voters themselves can decide when it is appropriate.

Stack sent the Center the results of a poll he commissioned in March indicating that more than three quarters of respondents think his dual position is "good for Union City."

"Let the people decide who they want in office," he said.

But thwarted candidates grumble that dual office holders are plugging the electoral pipeline.

Ingrid Reed, director of a Rutgers University center on New Jersey politics, works on a program to help women run in elections. At training sessions, she says, "it often comes up that if we didn't have dual office holding, there would simply be more opportunities to run for office."

Billy Delgado, a lawyer who recently lost a mayoral election in the city of Perth Amboy to an incumbent who is also an Assemblyman, said that dual office holding in New Jersey was nothing less than "modern feudalism."

The system reaches all the way to the top.

Strangely enough, in New Jersey two branches of government will actually share one leader starting in November, when Senate President Richard Codey replaces Jim McGreevey as governor.

Under the state Constitution, Codey must remain in charge of the Senate to stay governor. But he has vowed to push an amendment that would force him to quit the Legislature. It would be on the ballot in November 2005.