RICE STATEMENT ON NJ’S SELECT COMMISSION ON EMERGENCY COVID-19 BORROWING

TRENTON –  Senator Ronald L. Rice issued a statement today regarding the make-up, administrative process and expectations for New Jersey’s Select Commission on Emergency COVID-19 Borrowing:

As Chair of the New Jersey Legislative Black Caucus, I am well aware of the chorus of caucus members’ voices raised in both chambers of the State House decrying the exclusion of minority representation on the Select Commission on Emergency COVID-19 Borrowing.  Yet again, Black and Latino legislators have not been selected for a “select” commission – this time, one created to manage and manipulate a historical and unprecedented $9.9 billion-dollar loan to help New Jersey recover from the damage of the coronavirus pandemic.

We have been issued an explanation that the committee’s charge is to simply approve or deny the administration’s bonds proposals.  We are told that the heavy lifting will be done by the diverse members of the budget and appropriations committees and the Legislature at large.  But having been relegated to the sidelines once again, we find little comfort in that.  Knowing that such a critical and pivotal conversation will begin without us, we are not appeased.

As I wrote to the governor and our legislative leadership, “In the midst of a national cry for inclusivity, I feel our caucus is once again, inconceivably, subjugated to monitoring a process from afar.”  Most egregiously, this is a process of particular and urgent importance to the residents of our state most impacted by the health and economic devastation of COVID-19:  people of color, women and the disadvantaged.

Although members of the NJLBC stubbornly hope this is the last time we will be excluded, it certainly is not the first – and we are quite skilled at navigating tables where we are not extended a seat.  We will track developments from the outside and command attention to our concerns and interests in whatever way necessary.  In the meantime, I have called upon the governor and select committee leadership to partner with Lieutenant Governor Oliver and Chief Diversity Officer Agudosi with the express purpose of ensuring that the bonds are co-managed by minority firms and that the award of funding to communities, sectors and areas be commensurate with need.  I have requested assurance that the residents and communities that have suffered the greatest harm be extended every advantage to level the playing field once and for all.

The coronavirus has exposed much more than our physical fragility as human beings.  It has also stripped away the shoddy façade of systems and institutions to reveal racist frameworks that prevent us from really taking good care of each other.  It is my fervent hope that as science eradicates COVID-19, our society will quash the institutional injustices that have made some of us more vulnerable.

###

July 23, 2020 letter to Gov. Murphy, President Sweeney and Speaker Coughlin attached.