Missing in Action

I logged onto the State of New Jersey website today http://www.state.nj.us/ and learned that our esteemed governor and lieutenant governor are both missing in action, or more appropriately too lazy to report to work the Monday after Christmas.  It seems that these two lazy bums have left Senator Stephen Sweeney in charge as Acting Governor.

I can remember a few years back after Governor McGreevey's "I am proud to be a gay American" fiasco, that the Republicans took offense at our longstanding tradition of not having a lieutenant governor in this state.  They did not like the idea that a senate president of the opposing party could succeed a governor and wanted to insure that a Republican would succeed a Republican should anything happen to the sitting governor.

Guess what folks, the system broke down because the two top bums decided to take extended Christmas vacations at taxpayer expense.  The cheep chiselers should be docked each day they are not on the clock.

By the way, the snowstorm we just had was bad enough to declare a state of emergency, but Sweeney only authorized a two hour delayed opening for state offices.

Seems the little guys are supposed to report to work after a major snowstorm on the Monday after Christmas, but the honchos can skip out on their responsibilities.

I guess rank has privileges.

Here's an update.  My boss called me around 10:00 AM and told me we had the whole day off.  Great, somebody in upper management has some brains.  This didn't help one of my coworkers from North Jersey too much however.  He called my house shortly after I got word that we were closed.  He said he was en route to the office and was already on the Turnpike.

It would be nice if someone took a look out the window first before going with the knee-jerk reaction of a 2 hour delay simply because the papers don't like to see us get off when the weather is bad.

Seriously, Governor Christie and his lieutenent governor both deserve vacations like the rest of us.  However it would be nice if they could stagger them so at least one of them is around at all times.

Update # 2.  It is now Friday.  I wrote this originally on Monday, but didn't see anything about it in the papers until Wednesday, when an AP article ran in both the Trenton Times and Trentonian about the governor going to Disney World in Flordia the same time the lieutenent governor went to Mexico for vacation.  The result was that a Democrat, Stephen Sweeney, became Acting Governor.

Senator Bonnie Watson-Coleman said pretty much the same thing that I did about the situation.  She said she originally sponsored the bill to create the lieutenent governor's post to insure an orderly transition should the governor go out of state.  She said this can only work if the governor and lieutenent governor show common sense and coordinate their vacations so at least one of them is always in the state.

On the snowstorm, I heard that the station that broadcast the anouncement that the state was closed before word officially reached supervisors in my office was Jersey 101.5.  The way that the station got this information is because one of the station't employees is the husband of the political appointement in the public relations office at the labor department.  This appointee was supposed to pass on the information to the supervisors but she chose to tell her husband about it first, and he had it broadcasted to the public before the message got through official channels.

Several dozen people showed up at the labor building in Trenton.  Many of them traveled long distances beliving that there was only a two-hour delay.  Once these people showed up at work, they were turned away by the security guards who said the building was closed.

The announcement of the closure should have gone out earlier.  People should not have to spend several hours traveling to Trenton only to be sent home after making their way through snow covered streets.