If you’re looking for a theme in here you might consider lack of transparency as the overall thrust, especially when you look for the name “Jeff Brindle” among the state’s chief policymakers and come up empty.

Head of the state’s Election Law Enforcement Commission since 2009, Brindle found himself under the guillotine because of his outspoken opposition to hidden money — political contributions with shielded sources.

Whether it’s Brindle fighting the Murphy Administration for his professional life, or a $54.3 billion budget bloated into existence without public scrutiny or putrid air quality that suddenly sneaks up on us and chokes us nearly to death, schools that allow children to beat other children and film them as they cause traumatic injury, or storms that materialize without warning and kill, we reside in a state at last wholly subservient to the recesses of political corruption.

It’s real. It’s present. It’s dangerous.

It doesn’t help that the number one occupant on last year’s InsiderNJ Policymakers’ List, state Senator Ronald L. Rice, died in March of this year.

That said, good people – people like Senator Rice and others – continue to labor for noble purposes, even within the infernal latrine of NJ politics.

It’s the system we have, and the system incumbent on us to improve and make functional for those who live and work in this place we still love in spite of it all, otherwise known as New Jersey.

See you at the beach, kids.

Download Insider NJ’s 2023 Insider 100: Policymakers Publication or view it below: