McGreevey’s tainted legacy

James McGreevey’s gone, but he’s not forgotten. But with the scandalous legacy the governor leaves behind, he might wish he was.

The prevailing memory New Jersey residents and Americans will have of McGreevey is that of a married governor who was forced to leave office under the threat of a sexual harassment suit from his gay lover.

That he shamefully appointed Golan Cipel, an Israeli citizen with no qualifications to speak of, as New Jersey’s homeland security adviser in the post-9/11 climate can only reinforce his constituents’ view of the governor as a corrupt politician.

The list of appointees, political contributors and other cohorts who have been accused of crimes or resigned under fire lately doesn’t help him, either.

McGreevey leaves behind a dismal fiscal record, which his apologists defend him from by reminding us that he inherited deficits from the Whitman administration.

But what did he do to right the ship? He taxed so many aspects of our daily lives – some more than once – and walked a fine legal line this year by borrowing money to pay the state’s current expenses.

Indeed, if over the last three years you used a cell phone, smoked, drove too fast, commuted, worked — the list goes on — then you felt the pinch.

He made few friends in our school districts by freezing state aid and shifting the burden to local taxpayers, who responded at the polls in droves to squash increased budget proposals.

But the disappointments don’t end there. Under McGreevey, we most likely lost the Nets to Brooklyn, arts funds were slashed, and despite campaign talk of eliminating the nonsensical tolls along the Garden State Parkway, the toll system and its associated costs and headaches remain firmly intact.

Among the positives he can be remembered for were a few bold environmental initiatives.

McGreevey’s classification of many key water bodies as Category One upset the builders’ lobby, but indeed protected our drinking water and pristine lands for generations to come.

The same could be said for his sweeping protections of the state’s Highlands areas — described by the governor as his greatest environmental achievement — and the support he gave for the preservation of various open-space tracts and farms throughout the state.

Like Constantine’s deathbed conversion to Christianity, McGreevey had a late epiphany on the destructive influence of political contributions on policy makers, signing an executive order to guard against New Jersey’s pay-to-play phenomenon in the future. Time will tell if it’s effective, or ridden with the loopholes our system’s exploiters always seem to find.

In the final analysis, McGreevey was an ethically challenged Democrat from Middlesex County, who left behind some serious public relations problems for the state’s highest office.

Richard Codey, a Democrat from Essex County, stepped into this office Monday with plenty of work to do. It may not be the most enviable of tasks, but then again, this could be seen as a political gold mine, given the potential for improvement. We wish you the best, Mr. Codey, in steering our state toward a brighter, cleaner future.