Assembly hobbles through final legislative day of 2021

After many of its Republican members once again declined to cooperate with the statehouse’s vaccine-or-test policy this morning, the Assembly limped through its last voting day of 2021, approving more than 100 bills in an 11-hour marathon session with dozens of members voting remotely and a small number of Republicans repeatedly using procedural tactics to hold up the session.

The day’s drama began when a cohort of six Republican Assemblymembers were barred from entry this morning because they refused to comply with the vaccine mandate. Any entrance that those legislators attempted to uncooperatively use was shut down by the State Police, a tactic that proved more effective than troopers’ efforts on December 2.

When the voting session began at 1 p.m., the cohort of rebellious Assemblymembers remained absent, while a large number of both Republican and Democratic legislators never arrived at the capitol at all.

The result was an Assembly missing more than 30 of its members in person, forcing the Assembly clerk to record each of their remote votes separately. Further delays came when a small number of Republicans repeatedly made lengthy and often irrelevant comments on bills, seemingly with the intent of slowing the session down further.

As the gambit to delay the session became clear, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-South Amboy) grew increasingly frustrated, and often denied the renegade Republicans’ attempts to make points of order or to speak on bills out of turn. Taking cues from Coughlin, bill sponsors who were asked to allow questions on a bill declined to do so.

When Assemblyman Erik Peterson (R-Franklin), for example, complained about the difficulty of voting remotely early in the session, Coughlin told him that there was an easy way to rectify the problem: attend in person.

“You can come in the building, all you need to do is show your vaccination card like the rest of us,” Coughlin said.

Further challenges came later in the night, when a number of Assemblymembers who had originally been in attendance had left to vote remotely and others had stopped voting entirely. Many of those voting by phone reported not being able to hear Coughlin and the Assembly clerk due to technology issues, while others forgot to mute their own phones and had their private conversations intrude on the session.

But in the end, Coughlin successfully pushed ahead with the full legislative agenda, and finished the session ten minutes past midnight.

“Despite the desperate efforts of several members of the minority party to delay important legislation, we succeeded in passing major mental health legislation for our students, took steps on gun safety, honored our service members and veterans, furthered our support for economic development in Atlantic City, and kept commitments to safeguard our natural resources,” Coughlin said in a statement.

In stark contrast to the Assembly, the Senate proceeded through its own set of bills today with little interruption or difficulty, just as it has done this entire month.