Steinhardt: Jackson hiring should be investigated

State GOP chair Doug Steinhardt doesn’t want former Passaic councilman Marcellus Jackson, who was hired by Murphy’s administration last week, to work unsupervised.

“We should be throwing corruption out of public government, not welcoming it back in,” Steinhardt said. “If hiring corrupt officials back into state government is Governor Murphy’s new norm, then he clearly is deaf to the tone New Jersey residents want to hear”

Jackson was jailed 25 months, between 2009 and 2011, after he pled guilty of accepting $26,000 in bribes during his tenure in Passaic.

Steinhardt, as incensed as some other Republicans by Murphy’s hiring Jackson, wants the newly-formed Office of Public Integrity and Accountability to keep an eye on Jackson and investigate his hiring.

The office was formed by earlier in September by State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to improve public confidence in the state government and combat the type of corruption Jackson admitted to close to a decade ago.

“New Jersey’s residents deserve to see the results of an investigation into Jackson’s actual hiring. The bar should never be this low,” Steinhardt said. “At a time when we should be building the public’s trust in government, questionable decisions like this do nothing but set us back.”