Star Ledger; Date: Dec 21, 2008; Section: New Jersey; Page Number;28

EDITORIALS A pledge for elected officials

Each day, the sobering statistics pile up. The United States economy has been in a recession for a year, and New Jersey is floundering,

Layoffs, Foreclosures, Bankruptcies. A shriveling job market .The auto Industry circling the drain. Banks playing keep-away with taxpayer's bailout money. Towns begging for federal handouts. Anxious municipal workers wondering if they're the next to go.

Do you think any of New Jersey's elected officials have heard the news? We wonder, because even in these (fire tames, some are still trying to fatten their wallets at the expense of the desperate taxpayers.

Take Eldridge Hawking Jr., the new mayor of Orange, for instance. This is the guy who pledged to clean up the mess left behind by convicted Mims Hackett, Jr. Well, Hawkins cleaned up all right. After his election, he appointed himself to a $76,000 a year job as the town's fire official, because, well, he used to earn $70,000 as a cop and the $25,000 salary as mayor just wasn't going to cut it.

On Tuesday, Hawkins gave up the fire director salary after residents protested his initial proposal for an 18 percent tax increase and pointed to several double-dipping officials, like him. Hawkins says he decided he has to "share in the pain." Of course, it's painful. It hurts when you get the cash drawer slammed on your knuckles by taxpayers.

And how about Morristown mayor Donald Cresitello, who remains insistent he deserves a $6,000 raise and says he plans to include the raise in his new budget?

Cresitello says he deserves the salary boost because he has helped push through development, has saved Morristown a half-million dollars in health care costs and has cut fire and police overtime.

In other words, he wants more money for keeping the promises he made when he ran for office. Amazing.

Let's get real: Handing out raises — of any size—to elected officials in this economic climate is ludicrous.

At a time when New Jerseyans are staring at the most serious economic tames since the Great Depression, we think it's Irresponsible for elected officials — from town council members to mayors to state legislators — to accept a pay increase.

So, we're asking every elected official in New Jersey to take a pledge: For the duration of their current term, or before they are sworn m to a new one, they promise to neither seek nor accept a pay increase. And if the increase already has been approved for 2009 and beyond, they will turn it down and return the money.

Montclair township manager Joseph Hartnett and Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo have taken the pledge. Others should follow. Some will see it as a negotiating ploy to use against the PEA and other unions, but that's QK. The unions have to get the message, too: The people who pay their salaries, the taxpayers, aren’t getting raises — some are losing their jobs

— so negotiate accordingly.

If you're headed to the next council or committee meeting in your town, take this editorial with you and, in public session, with the tape recorders running, wave this page of The Star-Ledger and poll the panel:

Will each of them take the pledge or not? Get them on record. We know what the response will be from many officials: m the percentage of the overall budget the amount devoted to raises is tiny. Hawkins claimed the fire official's job cost each taxpayer a measly 16 bucks. But the point is it's their 16 bucks, and the job could be done by the fire chief at no additional cost.

Sixteen dollars is a good start -and, in these times, the right thing to do. So, to public officials we say: Take the pledge.