Sweeney names new committee chairs

Author: editor
01.14.10
Teaser: 

Shirley Turner (D-Lawrence) has been dumped as chair of the Senate Education Committee and replaced with Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark).  Ruiz backed Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford) in his race for Senate President, while Turner supported the incumbent, Richard Codey (D-Roseland).

Sweeney also replaced two Codey supporters: Joseph Vitale (D-Woodbridge), as chairman of the Health and Senior Services Committee.  The new chair is Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck), the 2009 Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor; and Ronald Rice (D-Newark) has been replaced as chairman of the Community and Urban Affairs Committee by Jefferson Van Drew (D-Middle Twp.).

Two other Codey backers, John Girgenti (D-Hawthorne) and Nicholas Sacco (D-North Bergen), keep their committee chairmanships.  But Codey, a former governor and a legislator since 1973, will not chair a committee.

“With any transition of power comes a degree of changing of the guard, but I think that we get the best of both worlds with the new Senate Majority leadership,” said Sweeney. “We’ve created new opportunities for diverse voices to be heard while incorporating some of the experience and wisdom of established leaders in the State Senate. I look forward to working with this team to address the issues concerning New Jersey’s residents and help make the Garden State a more affordable place to raise a family.”

Sweeney added new committees would see their focus change.  The Senate Environment Committee, which will also take up energy issues and be re-named the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, and the Senate State Government Committee, which will absorb the Wagering, Tourism and Historic Preservation Committee and be re-named the Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism and Historic Preservation Committee.  He has also created the Senate Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.

Click here to view the Senate committee chairs.

Shirley Turner (D-Lawrence) has been dumped as chair of the Senate Education Committee and replaced with Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark).  Ruiz backed Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford) in his race for Senate President, while Turner supported the incumbent, Richard Codey (D-Roseland).

Premium Content: 
0
Images
All the article images
Horizontal Image: 

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), ranking Member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), spoke to bloggers at The Heritage Foundation’s weekly Bloggers Briefing today and focused his remarks on the controversial “Climategate” scandal — the series of leaked e-mails that have blown holes through the theory of man-made global warming.

As Sen. Inhofe sat down to speak, he opined that he was just in the Senate trying to convince Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to investigate the subject of the e-mails, instead of the people who uncovered the e-mails. Sen. Inhofe was the leader of the global warming opposition ten years ago when he chaired the EPW Committee; when a blogger asked him what he thought about the emergent news that the science was flawed, the Senator quipped, “Redemption.”

Senator Inhofe is not alone in his views on “Climategate.” The UK Telegraph called it the “greatest scandal in modern science,” and the UK MET is reevaluating over 160 years of climate data because “public opinion of man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.” Sen. Inhofe seemed confident that neither climate bills would pass the Senate, but feared the Obama Administration would circumvent the legislative process and use the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to force regulation through the Clean Air Act. Sen. Inhofe fired back by releasing a YouTube video saying that the EPA finding that CO2 is a pollutant was based on faulty science.

Now, the United Nations is in the middle of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, where “the science is settled.” However, as we have stated, the science is far from settled. Now, the world has learned that the basis of the science that climate change was founded on could be proven faulty. This has not stopped the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change from creating a treaty that will be costly to the US economy and not have any real impact on the environment. And it’s a treaty that would infringe on our national sovereignty.

You can listen to Sen. Inhofe’s remarks here.

You can watch the video of his remarks here.