Interview with Michael R. Cole

Interview with Michael R. Cole Michael Aron: It’s the morning of January twenty-second, 2009 , two days after the inauguration of President Barack Oba...
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Interview with Michael R. Cole Michael Aron: It’s the morning of January twenty-second, 2009 , two days after the inauguration of President Barack Obama. We are at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers for the Thomas H. Kean Archive of the Rutgers Program on the Governor. We’re gonna be talking this morning to Michael Cole. Michael was First Assistant Attorney General during the first Kean term, and became chief counsel to the governor during the second term. We hope to learn a lot about Tom Kean this morning. Michael, let’s begin with you becoming chief counsel to Governor Kean. How did that happen? Michael Cole: At the time I was the First Assistant Attorney General and the Director of the Division of Law in the Attorney General’s Office, and it was the end of the first Kean term. Cary Edwards was moving over to the attorney general spot to replace Irwin Kimmelman, and I got a phone call at home on a Sunday. Q: From whom? Michael Cole: From the governor asking if I would consider being chief counsel. And we chatted for awhile, because I was apolitical, and a political independent, and we talked about whether or not he had any concerns as to whether or not I’d be able to do the job, to work with the legislature and to craft bills, to present his position on bills, and to present his position on the budget publicly, which was a big part of that job under Kean. The governor’s counsel was the one who was in charge of the budget moving forward. Q: Were you surprised to get that call? Michael Cole: I was actually intrigued to get that call, because I had pretty much exhausted what I thought I could accomplish in the Attorney General’s Office. I had been there, I think, at that point time for eight years, had started under Governor Byrne, and so I had held a lot of positions. I had the office for eight years. It’s a long time to be in a leadership position in an office of that size. I was pretty much, I thought, exhausted in what I could accomplish. So this was a whole new opportunity with a whole new venue. Q: Were there any prior hints from the governor that he had his eye on you for a spot like this? Michael Cole: No. I worked a lot with him on a number of problems during his first term in office. Most of his problems at that time seemed to involve some application of legal principles. So I had worked a lot with him closely during the first term on budget and other matters, and I guess we got along pretty well. Q: Cary Edwards was quite a political operative as chief counsel, sort of trying to implement the governor's program through a legislature he had served in. Did you have concerns about your ability to carry on that part of the job? Michael Cole: Yeah. Initially, of course, I had concerns, ‘cause I had never done anything quite like that before, but it’s like all new jobs. You start on Monday and two weeks later you feel like you’ve been doing the job your whole life. And I was very comfortable. I had very little difficulty dealing with the legislature, because I had known many of them over the years, because of being there for eight years in the AG’s office, attending budget hearings, bills, interacting with them on a number of things, representing whether it be Governor Byrne or Governor Kean’s position on governmental issues, which are the question of where the power lies as between the executive and the legislature. I’d represented- I’d handled most of those cases over the preceding years, so I got to know a number of them. Q: Did you make any changes in the Counsel’s Office? Michael Cole: Yes and no. The Counsel’s Office, when I moved into it, I think had something like twenty-three assistant counsels and assistant to the assistant counsel. I think I reduced it to about twelve.

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Q: Why? Michael Cole: It was much easier for me. I could become more involved in what all of them were doing. I had more senior people as a result of having downsized, and I had some pretty good people who were still around the state. Q: Such as. Michael Cole: Leonard Lance was there. Peter Pizzuto, who is now a tax court judge, was there. I think he may be retiring this year. Jaynee LaVecchia was there, who is now my spouse. Q: And a supreme court justice. Michael Cole: And a supreme court justice. Bill Harla, who was there for a couple of years. He’s still my law partner, and Janice and Bob Mintz. Janice Mintz went on to become director, or commissioner, of the Department of Personnel. Q: During the Whitman era. Michael Cole: During the Whitman years. And Bob is still a partner at McCarter and English, one of the largest firms in the state. So I had a pretty good, well experienced staff. Jane Kelley, who I think is still in government in one capacity or another. I think she may be with the School Construction Corporation now. She was my counsel for environmental matters. Jean Bogle, who was, is workers’ comp judge now, was one of the assistant counsels. So we had a good measure of experience and seniority. There were not junior people, so they could really run with bills and other matters. Q: When did you first meet Tom Kean? Michael Cole: I think I met the governor sometime during his first two or three months in office. Q: You didn’t know him when he was a candidate for governor? Michael Cole: No. I had never met him, although I guess I had worked for someone who he had been a chauffer for at one point in time. Q: Who was that? Michael Cole: I think at one point in time he was the advance person for Al Clapp, who was a former judge, and a partner in the first law firm I was with before I went to government, firm called Clapp and Eisenberg. Q: What became of that firm? Michael Cole: That firm dissolved in, I think, ’97 or ’98, after a series of defections by partners. Q: But it was a big firm in its day, well a prominent New Jersey firm. Michael Cole: It was prominent. There were no big firms. I think it had twenty-three lawyers when I was there. Degnan was also there when I was there, John Degnan, who became attorney general. I think the largest firm in New Jersey was somewhere in those days around fifty lawyers. That would have been McCarter and English. Q: And you’re saying that Tom Kean drove Al Clapp? Michael Cole: That’s what I’m recalling.

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Q: Yeah? Michael Cole: That’s what I’m recalling. I could be wrong. Q: When he was a judge? Michael Cole: No, no. Al Clapp was a former state senator, and became a judge, and I think then went back into political office again. So he was a Republican of considerable stature in Essex County for years and years and years, as well as a great lawyer. Q: How about you? Where did you grow up? Michael Cole: I grew up in a little town called Roselle Park , New Jersey . Q: Which is Union County . Michael Cole: Which is Union County , and I went to high school and college in Bayonne for high school, place called Marist, and college, Saint Peter’s. So I knew a lot of folks from Hudson County , who remain in government in various positions even today. Q: What did your parents do? Michael Cole: My father was a structural steel worker, who passed away in 1962, and my mother did some sewing for awhile, but mostly she was a mother who took care of her seven children. Q: Were you poor? Michael Cole: I never considered us poor. I think that’s always relative. I don’t think we ever wanted for anything, although I suspect we didn’t have the newest clothes on the block, or certainly the newest color on the block, but I thought we had a rich life. Q: Were you interested in politics in those days, or government, or the law? Michael Cole: No. I became- I was interested in- I didn’t become interested in the law until I’d been out of school for a year. I finished college, and then I was interested in working, earning some money and contributing towards the family. I worked for a company that had many names over the years, but it was a toy company basically in Elizabethport , New Jersey . It was called “Deluxe Redding,” called “Topper Toys” at various points in time. Q: What did you do for them? Michael Cole: Personnel. I was number two in personnel, and we would hire anywhere during the season ten to fifteen thousand workers to work the assembly lines as we made Topper Toys, which some of the names are Susie Homemaker, Johnny Seven, a whole. Q: Made them in New Jersey ? Michael Cole: Made ‘em in New Jersey and shipped ‘em from New Jersey out of the old Singer building in shipping docks in Elizabethport. Q: Ten to fifteen thousand workers. Michael Cole: Ten to fifteen thousand, and by Christmas time they’d all be gone. They were laid off. So it became, you know, the job was first hiring people, getting all the paperwork done, getting ‘em in. Then second, since most -3-

of ‘em were there long enough to qualify for unemployment, making sure that they didn’t get lost in the shuffle after the layoffs. And that went on year after year after year. Q: So how did you migrate from there to law school? Michael Cole: I decided one day that law sounded like a pretty exciting thing to do, and I forget what it was. I don’t know if it was an individual or what it was, or whether it was just what was in the media at the time, but I decided to try. So I enrolled in Rutgers , was fortunate enough to get a scholarship. Rutgers wasn’t very much money in those days, but nonetheless every bit helped. And so I started a year late. I started in ’67, I guess, which is sort of one-year behind my class. But I enjoyed Rutgers . I had to work as I went to school, and I continued to work at the toy company during the time I was at Rutgers . I guess I did well enough at Rutgers to secure a clerkship on the New Jersey Supreme Court at the time. Q: Who’d you clerk for? Michael Cole: I clerked for a justice named Tom Schettino. But my good fortune was that in those days in Newark four justices shared chambers, Justice Francis, Justice Jacobs, Chief Justice Weintraub, and Justice Schettino. So while you worked for a particular justice, you would work for all, and I had the good fortune to work pretty closely with Chief Justice Weintraub during that year. Q: What did you think of him? Michael Cole: I thought he was the most remarkable person in the law I’d ever met, or ever will meet. He probably taught me more about being a good lawyer in those interactions during that one year than I ever learned in three years of law school, or thereafter. He was a brilliant guy, just brilliant. Q: Do you remember any of the opinions that you worked on? Michael Cole: One I always remember was his opinion, I’ll probably get the name wrong. I think it was “Shack v. Tajeris [58 NJ 171; 1971].” It was a case as to whether or not the legal aid worker- it was still called legal aid in those days, out of Camden County, could be denied access to a farm where migrant workers were working, who he wanted to represent. And he was unceremoniously escorted off the property and charged with trespass. And the case was presented to the court as to whether or not an exception should be made to what otherwise would be an absolute property right to deny access. Could a private property owner deny access to a third party to its property? And the case was a test as to whether or not the fact that you employ migrant farm workers, who were a class of persons who were denied basic rights just about everywhere in those days, required that you give up some of your property rights. And I remember it because I remember the way the Chief Justice started his opinion, and he had a way of writing opinions that were ten, twelve, thirteen pages, but spoke volumes. He always spoke volumes. And I think he started it by saying, “Property rights serve human values. When they pose an impediment to the achievement of those values, they must succumb.” And so you sort of knew in the first sentence where he was going. Didn’t quite know how he was gonna get there, but he made it simple. Q: Was he a liberal? Michael Cole: I think he was a liberal on social issues certainly. He was very conservative on criminal issues. The entire court was. And, you know, in those days, you had all the consumer fraud cases. That court was famous for “Henningsen” [Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, 32 N.J. 358; (1960)] and other cases establishing rights of consumers and requiring that companies, manufacturers, and sellers of products recognize those rights, but it was very, very conservative on criminal issues. Q: Was Scatino, whom I’ve never heard of, was he a good justice? Michael Cole: He was a good justice. When I clerked for him, I think it was his next to last year. He had some -4-

health problems, but he was a decent- he was a good, decent man. Actually the court shifted in my year, but the court was a mix of intellectual giants, and I would say Jacobs, Francis, Justices Jacobs and Francis, certainly fall into that category, as does the chief justice. And it had some good and decent people who were good lawyers, but were maybe not intellectual giants, but gave a sense of humanity to the others. I would put Justice Proctor and Justice Schettino in that category. Q: How did Chief Justice Weintraub lead that group of justices? Michael Cole: I think he had very- I think he led by being an intellectual giant that they all recognized as such, but he never really, in my interactions with him, did anything to trample everyone else’s right to be heard on an issue. Their conferences were, as far as I know anyway, very well- let me start that again. The conferences were open. Everyone got to talk. They went around the room. I think they used the same thing they use today, which is the seniority basis of talking. Everyone got their say. They would talk it out, and reach a consensus. They were not a court known for having ringing dissents. It was very seldom that they did. They found a way to reach common ground on most issues, if not all issues, and I think that’s because they had been together so long, they may have been the court that served together for the longest period of time in our history. In my year, Justice Haneman retired, and was replaced by Justice Mountain . That was the only change in the court in, I think, at least a decade. Q: Chief Justice Weintraub was succeeded by Chief Justice Hughes. Michael Cole: No. Q: No? Michael Cole: He was succeeded by Pierre Garvin. Q: Garvin. Michael Cole: Who was the Chief Counsel to Governor Cahill. But Chief Justice Garvin was not well, had kidney failure, and passed away within months of being sworn in. And that was at the very end of the Cahill administration, and that’s when I think the election may have even already taken place, and Governor Byrne was coming in. But Governor Cahill appointed Chief Justice Hughes as Chief Justice, and whether that was with the blessing, or with the tacit consent of Governor Byrne, I don’t know. Q: And then after Hughes came, Wilentz, how did Weintraub compare to Wilentz? Michael Cole: I think they were both brilliant. They were both bright. I think Weintraub had a way of expressing himself succinctly, which I don’t think Chief Justice Wilentz quite matched up to. Chief Justice Wilentz wrote some of the longest opinions on the court. Some of them would take up a volume, if you don’t want to say volume, they’re reported in the NJ Reporter. That’s a book. Each book would contain three hundred and fifty to four hundred pages. And at least one, maybe two of those Reporters consist of one opinion. They were big cases and deserved big opinions, but I don’t think anyone has ever written quite as long as the “ Mount Laurel ” opinions of the Chief Justice Wilentz, or some of his other opinions. They were long, and they took a long time. They took months and months and months to make. Q: The Supreme Court of New Jersey has acquired a reputation as an activist court. Has it changed the public’s opinion of what a court should be? What do you see as the relationship between the New Jersey Supreme Court and the New Jersey public and public opinion? Michael Cole: I think it’s mixed. I think the side of the court that the lawyers like, its ability to tackle difficult issues, leads to the publication of opinions that the public doesn’t always understand. I’ve never thought the public understood the school funding line of cases, because you have to go back twenty years. It’s twenty years of opinions, and you have a line of cases. And it’s certainly never understood the “ Mount Laurel ” line of cases. And -5-

those are the two cases that are most talked about politically when politicians talk about the court, and newspapers, as well, when they talk about the court. And it’s very easy, I think, to demonize those opinions, because they both result in a shift of funding between communities, and result in a disruption of lifestyle, some would say. In the “ Mount Laurel ” line of cases, particularly when the court talked about a builder’s remedy, which is the only way you get housing built is if you allow a builder to build more housing than you otherwise would, so long as they set aside a certain percentage of what they build for low and moderate income housing. That leads to a lot of development in the suburbs that I think has led a lot of people to blame the court for what they view are excess development and excess roads. Q: Tom Kean called it communistic. Michael Cole: Yes. But he didn’t really mean that. Q: We’re gonna get to that. Michael Cole: The problem is no one else has ever come up with a different way to do it than the builder’s remedy. Q: How did you get into government and when? Michael Cole: My entre into government, this is the only time I’ve ever been involved in government. Q: No. I’m leaving out the court. The court is part of government, but moving beyond clerking for a Supreme Court justice, how did you get into government? Michael Cole: Nineteen seventy-eight, a friend of mine, an old colleague at Clapp and Eisenberg, John Degnan, was appointed attorney general in the second Byrne administration. And John asked me if I was interested in joining him in the Attorney General’s Office, and I was. It sounded interesting. The position that was open because a gentleman named Paul Levy, who was also a judge, who retired many years now, had become First Assistant Attorney General under Degnan, thereby opening a position for the Assistant Attorney General in Charge of Litigation, which was vacant, which I assumed as coming in. Q: Were you a Democrat? Michael Cole: No. I was an Independent. Q: Were you registered as an Independent, or you were just unaffiliated. Michael Cole: Then I was just unaffiliated. I eventually declared myself as a Democrat when the same fellow named John Degnan was running for governor at the end of the Byrne administration, and subsequently I reregistered as an Independent. I’ve been a registered Independent ever since. Q: So you went to work as the Director of Litigation in the Attorney General’s Office. Michael Cole: Well, the Assistant in Charge of Litigation, yes. Q: And what did you litigate that’s memorable? Michael Cole: I thought they were all memorable. Twenty years later, I just can’t remember ‘em, but I litigated a lot of things that no one’s ever heard of. I litigated the unaccountable expense account, the Constitutionality of the unaccountable expense account. Q: What is that?

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Michael Cole: Every governor has, and it varies over time, from governor to governor, but every governor is accorded by the legislator a certain sum of moneys to be spent for expenses as he sees fit, for which he or she is accountable to no one, the theory being that they may do things which politically could be cast in a non-favorable light, but, you know, they entertain people. They don’t track it, and they spend money. And it was challenged. That was one of the first cases I handled. Q: Who do you think challenged it, the Republicans in the legislature? Michael Cole: No. I think it was- I’m not gonna give the name, ‘cause I’m not absolutely sure of it, but it was a good government type person who- so it was not an evil motivated challenge. It was a challenge that was designed to define where the limits were. Q: And the State’s position was? Michael Cole: Our position was that the legislature had every right to do it. It made sense. It was a reasonable exercise of the legislative judgment, and the governor needed this kind of flexibility. He needed this kind of lack of public visibility to everything he did. The governor had to declare the money on his tax return, and if he had legitimate expenses, he had to show ‘em to the IRS. If he didn’t, he was taxed on the money as income received by him. So there were mechanisms built into the system to make sure the money was spent appropriately, but the governor should not have been put in a position where he had to be out front with everything. If he entertained a governor of Puerto Rico , or something like that, that shouldn’t be all over the front pages. Q: I assume the court agreed with you. Michael Cole: Yes, it did. And another case was, that I remember, was a case involving Barbara Curran. Barbara was a member of the Assembly. She subsequently became President of the BPU and a judge, but the case involved the ineligibility clause. Barbara had been elected to the Assembly. She had resigned her position to accept the BPU appointment, but during the time, the term, the two-year term for which she was elected, the legislature had increased the salary of all of the cabinet officers, including the BPU commissioners. And there’s a clause in the Constitution that says, “No one is eligible to accept an appointment to a position where the salary or emoluments thereof have been increased during the term for which that person was elected as a legislator.” I think it was PIRG brought an action challenging her eligibility to serve, and our position was, of course, she had resigned before the raise had been implemented, and therefore she was not a member in the Constitutional sense when that raise was implemented. And it turned on future, the use of the future perfect, pluperfect in the Constitutional language. She was allowed to sit. Q: She was allowed to sit. Michael Cole: She was allowed to sit. I mean, it was sort of the second in a line of cases. The first one had been- I forget his name now, the “Wiley” case. Steve Wiley was a state senator who, I believe it was Governor Byrne, very much wanted to appoint to the court. And unfortunately for Steve, the year before Byrne announced his appointment, they had adopted a increase for judges and cabinet officers, same situation. So the case had come up before. That case had turned on whether legislatively they could deny him the raise legislatively, and thereby make him eligible to serve. And the Supreme Court had said, “No. You couldn't do that.” Barbara’s was a little different. Michael Aron: What else do you recall being involved in as the Assistant in Charge of Litigation? Michael Cole: Well, the casino licensing hearings was not really within my jurisdiction, but I had been lent to the Division of Gaming unfortunately, which as also in the Attorney General’s Office, to handle the second licensing proceeding for a casino in New Jersey . The first had been Resorts, and after Resorts. Q: Let me interrupt you for one second. Resorts was, as I recall, a big battle to get licensed. There was a lot of concern that Resorts wasn’t entirely clean. Is that correct? -7-

Michael Cole: Yeah. There was a lot of concern about Resorts, and I think it all came because they had casinos in the Bahamas , perhaps, maybe one. And there had been a number of stories written about how they had gotten their license down there, and what the relationship was with the government down there. So there was a lengthy licensing proceeding on Resorts, which Mickey Grown, who was an Assistant Attorney General, handled for the State. Ultimately Resorts was given a license. Thereafter, Abscam intervened, and when Abscam was a federal investigation dealing with a sheikh, who had a lot of money to spread around, and went in a number of jurisdictions, including New Jersey . But in New Jersey . Q: He was a fake sheikh. He was an FBI guy. Michael Cole: Yes. He was a fake sheikh. He didn’t even look like a sheikh. He didn’t talk like a sheikh. Didn’t dress like a sheikh, but he went around. One of the persons that he entrapped or entrapped, not meaning in a legal sense, but was a fellow, I believe, named Kenneth MacDonald, if I’m recalling correct. Was one of the part-time commissioners to the Casino Control Commission. He was never charged, never tried, because he passed away, but it prompted a lot of reform in New Jersey , and that reform included going with a full time casino control commission. Joseph Lordi had been the chairman of the part-time commission, and he continued to chair the full time commission, but there were four full time commissioners brought on to replace, I think, what had been two part-time commissioners. So we had a new commission, a lot of fire power. Martin Danziger was one of the people who was brought on. He was a Washington attorney, a government attorney, and we tried the “Boardwalk Regency” case to that body. Q: You’re saying that was the second big licensure? Michael Cole: That was the second licensure hearing. Q: What was the State’s position? Michael Cole: The State’s position was, at the time it was kind of novel. The State’s position was that- it’s not anymore. No reason I say that. The State’s position was that there were individuals who are in ownership positions and control positions in “Boardwalk Regency,” namely the two Perlman brothers, and I don’t remember their first names. Q: Stuart? Michael Cole: Stuart and. Q: Clifford. Michael Cole: And Clifford, who were associated with a gentleman who was known as the heir apparent to Meyer Lansky, fellow named Alvin Malnik. And those associations were deep and had existed for years, and because of those associations, they were not licensed. They could not be licensed. They didn’t meet the standard and couldn’t prove by clear and convincing evidence a good moral character. Q: Were you successful? Michael Cole: Yeah. But the real twist in our theory was that you could separate the men from the company. And if you separated the men from the company, then you look at the company anew, in terms of who they brought in, not only in ownership positions, but who they brought in to run the company to determine whether the company, itself, had good moral character. Q: Was Boardwalk Regency the same entity as Caesar’s? Michael Cole: Yes. -8-

Q: That was their New Jersey name? Michael Cole: That was their New Jersey name. “Caesar’s World” was their corporate name, was the name they were listed under on the exchanges. Q: So they won a license to open a casino on the Boardwalk without the Perlmans involved. Michael Cole: Had to replace their management. And they did, and they had to replace not only the Perlmans, but I think one other person, as well. Q: You told us before we started that you were involved in an abortion matter, Medicaid abortions? Michael Cole: I was not. It was a matter that was in the Byrne, second term of Byrne, where New Jersey , as a number of states, denied Medicaid funding for abortions. There was a choice that you could provide it. Many states provided it although they had to bear the cost a hundred percent. The federal government would not reimburse. And on the federal side, it was known as the “Hyde Amendment.” In New Jersey we had a similar amendment in state law. I forget how it came to be. I don’t remember if Governor Byrne was the governor when the amendment was adopted, or whether it was adopted before, but it was challenged by Legal Services, and we defended it. Q: You defended the position that the State should not. Michael Cole: That the State had the right to restrict its funding for abortion. It did not have an obligation under State law to provide a hundred percent funding for abortion, ‘cause there was no federal money available. Q: And what did the court decide? Michael Cole: The court ultimately decided that New Jersey- the Federal Constitution was not the only document involved, because it had been litigated on the federal side. The constitutionality of the “Hyde Amendment” the United States Supreme Court had found that the government could restrict Medicaid funding for abortions. The New Jersey Supreme Court, however, found that the State Constitution went further than the federal in terms of protecting privacy rights, and that under the State Constitution, the State had to provide the funding. Q: So you lost that one. Michael Cole: I lost that one. Sometimes you lose. Q: Did you have any role in the “Pinelands Executive Order” that Governor Byrne issued? Michael Cole: Yes, yes. I worked on the brief, and I worked on the Executive Order, and trying to remember. I think John Degnan argued the case, but I don’t think we ever got a decision from the court. And that’s because the builders and others had accepted the Pinelands restrictions before the court had an opportunity to rule. That same issue came up again in the Kean administration. There it wasn’t the Pinelands. There it was Fresh Water Wetlands. And essentially what Governor Byrne did is he shut down the approval process, no building permits, no State approvals, or anything in Pine Barrens , and offered a chance for some limited exceptions to that if people accepted the overall restriction on building in the Pine Barrens . And ultimately that’s what the builders accepted, I anticipate because they were not willing to run the risk of what the court might do. Q: Did you think the order was constitutional? Michael Cole: Yes. And later, many years later, well, maybe not that many, but in the second Kean term, we had a similar circumstance as before with wetlands, where the builders were against it, and we entered a similar type of executive order shutting down building permits in the wetlands areas until we had a program in place.

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Q: And what makes an action like that constitutional? Michael Cole: Well, under the Constitution the governor is the chief executive officer of the State, and the real legal question when you reduce it to its essential terms is do you have a right to have the Commissioner of DCA make a decision on your permit, or can that decision be preordained by the governor’s Executive Order? Telling them, “Mr. Commissioner, if anyone brings a permit before you near wetlands, this is what I want you to do. Deny it.” So that was really the test, and essentially that was the test in both areas. Q: And you’re saying the court never got to. Michael Cole: The court never got to it, because in the case of the wetlands, as well, the builders ultimately agreed that the legislature could adopt restrictions on building in the wetlands, and they didn’t want to wait for a court decision on that. Q: Were you involved in the Oil Spill Fund legislation, defending that legislation? Michael Cole: Yes, but I did not argue it, and I was not responsible for the briefing. Q: What was it like working, or did you work closely with the Attorney General, Cary Edwards? Michael Cole: Yes, I did, but he was not-- I was in the governor’s office when Cary Edwards was. Q: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, with John Degnan, who had brought you in. Michael Cole: Yes. We worked on a number of things. We also, you know, one of the other major initiatives we had in those days was what we called the deregulation of liquor pricing. In the ‘70s, anywhere you went to buy a bottle of Seagram’s, you paid the same price. There was no competition. They were all price fixed. So one of the things that John Degnan had done as the Attorney General, who oversees alcoholic beverage control, the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, was to adopt regulations which created competition, so you could actually shop around and get a better price. Before that, no one, everyone used the same price. If you wanted a cheaper price you had to go to New York . Q: Was that a good thing he did? Michael Cole: I think it was a good thing. I think it created competition where there was none, and it was a boost for consumers at the time. We’re creating no danger either, ‘cause regulations remained the same, you know. The age regulations remained the same. The oversight regulations remained the same. Q: What did you think of Degnan? Michael Cole: I like John Degnan. Q: Back then? Michael Cole: Back then and now, and in between. Q: Was he your candidate for governor in 1981? Michael Cole: Yes, yes. Q: Why? Michael Cole: Because I knew him. I thought that his idea of what government should be was one I shared. -10-

Q: Activist? Michael Cole: He was a liberal Democrat. And he was a fiercely honest man and a hard worker. That’s why from among, I think, nine candidates, I think it was probably nine candidates in 1981, he was my candidate in the primary. Wasn’t to be. Q: And yet you went to work for the man who he would have been running against had he won the nomination. Michael Cole: As it turns out, yes. Q: Did you have to make some kind of internal accommodation with yourself? Michael Cole: No. They’re very, very similar. Q: Are they? Michael Cole: Yes. Q: How so? Michael Cole: Well, I think Governor Kean always was a socially moderate to liberal. He was very conservative fiscally. I can’t tell you I remember how John was fiscally, because we had no money in those days. In the last year of the Byrne administration, there was no money. We had double digit inflation. Taxes, tax revenues were off. It was hard. Seemed like we were always in a budget freeze. Governor Kean was fiscally conservative, but socially moderate, and a good government person. No question that he didn’t have hidden agendas. On anything he did, he put everything out there for you to see and pushed hard for it. Q: By the end of the Byrne administration, you were still in charge of the Litigation Division, or had you? Michael Cole: By that time I was in charge of the entire Division of Law. So anything on the civil side of the AG’s office I was in charge of, including litigation. Q: And did that require you to stay out of involvement in the campaign in ’81, both the primary and the general election campaign? Michael Cole: Yes. We had a rule that you could not be politically active. Q: So you were rooting for Degnan from the sidelines, as it were. Michael Cole: Yes. And you were allowed to contribute. You were allowed to contribute money, but you could not become actively involved. Q: Jim Florio won the primary. Degnan finished fourth, as I recall. Michael Cole: I think there were about nine candidates, so I accept that. Q: So after the primary, who was your candidate, Florio or Kean? Michael Cole: I don’t think I had one after the primary. I was concentrating on another job I thought I had. Q: Oh, really. Michael Cole: Which was I succeeded a fellow named Steve Skillman, who was a very famous judge in New -11-

Jersey, who had been Director of the Division of Law for probably eight years, and I succeeded him. And I thought one of my obligations was to bring the Division of Law through a transition. It was an apolitical place. Politics served- had no place there, and I don’t think we ever had a problem with that. But aside from Steve Skillman, no one had ever come through a transition from one part to another in the Division of Law. And I thought that one of my obligations was to make sure that the Division of Law survived a change in control. Q: So you were saying to yourself even in the summer of ’81, well, if Kean wins this election, I should stay on for the sake of the Division? Michael Cole: I was determined to stay on, for among maybe other things, to the sake of the Division. Yes. Q: That election was the closest in New Jersey gubernatorial history. Michael Cole: Correct. Q: What was your involvement in sorting it out? Michael Cole: My involvement was, because of a number of factors, it fell to me to supervise and interface with the court on recounts. We had, you know, we had probably six or seven different voting apparatus at the time in the twenty-one counties, everything from card scans, to ballots, to punch cards. We had never done a statewide recount before. I don’t think we have since, either, so we had to devise rules that could be utilized by each county, ‘cause the recounts are done at the county level, either by the Board of Elections or the County Superintendent ’s Office. So the recounts all had to have rules that fit, whether or not they had machine cards, punch cards, paper ballots. And I think when we started the recount, Governor Kean was ahead of Governor Florio, in round numbers maybe seventeen hundred and ninety votes. And there were a number of shifts. As you went through the recount, there’d be a block of fifty here that was a transposition error that should have gone to the other guy, but on the other side there would be a similar transposition error. So there were errors on both sides, and it wound up, I think, maybe instead of seventeen ninety, maybe nineteen hundred votes. The total net change was a hundred votes or less. Q: How long did it take? Michael Cole: It took till after Thanksgiving. Q: Three weeks, more than three weeks. Michael Cole: More than three weeks, and we did some things that I’m not sure in hindsight we would do again. Q: Such as. Michael Cole: We locked up all the machines. We had voting machines, and we locked ‘em all up, even though they were sealed the night of the election. At an abundance of caution we moved them all to central warehouse locations and locked ‘em up under twenty-four hour State Police guard. Q: Why wouldn’t you do that again? Michael Cole: Because the machines were never a problem. The problem always came down to paper, the paper ballots, ‘cause the paper ballots are where you had problems come up as to whether a ballot was properly marked. Whether there were identifying marks that you could tell the identity of the voter on the ballot? The machines, as it turned out, were never a problem, even though there were lots of stories about people throwing into machines to change the counter. It never happened. So it was a major expense, a major manpower expenditure that I’m not sure really added anything. One thing we did prove is that the counts were accurate. That’s the one thing that we proved. Q: So Kean really did win. -12-

Michael Cole: Kean really did win. Q: How did this recount differ from the very famous recount at the presidential level eighteen, nineteen years later? Michael Cole: I think there was a feeling of trust among the participants in the case of the New Jersey recount which didn’t exist at the national level, and particularly in Florida . The persons who handled the recount for Governor Kean were Cary Edwards and Irwin Kimmelman. And the persons who handled it for Jim Florio were a fellow named Steve Weinstein. I believe it was Blank Rome in South Jersey , and Clive Cummis. And we included them in every decision that we made concerning procedure, in part because everybody, Governor Byrne, particularly, wanted this, there to be no suggestion there’s anything untoward in New Jersey . We didn’t want to give any validity to the stories about what happens in Hudson County , not that there’s any validity to those stories at all. But when you go into graveyards and take down names for voters, you know, we didn’t want that to be a national joke. Michael Aron: So do you recall how you and the new governor brought up the question of your continuing on from a Democratic administration into a Republican administration as head of the Division of Law? Michael Cole: I was asked to stay on by Irwin Kimmelman, who was appointed Attorney General by Governor Kean. Q: Why do you think he asked you to stay on? Michael Cole: I think I had a pretty good reputation as a lawyer, and I think they thought I was honest. Q: And this is, in fact, what you wanted anyway, to continue on. Michael Cole: That’s right. Q: Had you made that known to them? Michael Cole: I might have. I don’t remember that, though. During the recount, there was only one person, I believe, who ever spoke to the court. There was a special three-judge court appointed to hear disputed ballots, and the only person who ever spoke to the court was me. Q: You were the neutral independent. Michael Cole: I was the person who weighed the Republican arguments and the Democratic arguments, and the attorney general’s point of view. Q: So since it came out good for the Republicans, they rewarded you. Michael Cole: No. I don’t think Governor Florio ever- Governor Florio stopped the recount because his person, Steve and everyone else had looked at everything, had found no voter fraud, had found nothing untoward in the way the election was handled, and he accepted the fact that he had been defeated in a very close race, but he had been defeated. He was very gracious about it. That also differed from what happened in Florida in the presidential. Q: So Irwin Kimmelman gets named Attorney General by Tom Kean, and he asks you to stay on as head of the Division of Law, which is what, the number three ranking position in the Department of Law and Public Safety? Michael Cole: Depends on your point of view. I’m sure that the Director of Criminal Justice would probably have his own version of who’s number. Q: Who’s number two. -13-

Michael Cole: Yeah, or three. Q: Or three. Michael Cole: Clearly number two was First Assistant. Q: First Assistant Attorney General. Isn’t that sometimes also the head of either the Division of Law or Criminal Justice? Michael Cole: Yes, can do. Q: And what did you get to work on, do you recall? Michael Cole: I continued doing the work of the Division. We had a number of issues come up. I think we had a redistricting challenge in there that went to the United States Supreme Court. Q: A congressional redistricting? Michael Cole: Congressional redistricting. At the State level we call it reapportionment. We had a redistricting challenge. We had a number of other cases, the “ Hillside ” case, where we were trying to segregate- desegregate the schools in Hillside , and there was a lot of local opposition to that. We had a solid waste crisis at the time. At the time the counties were responsible for disposing of their waste. A number of counties had no disposal sites, and we were working with DEP trying to create space for waste disposal, or if nothing else finding a way where they could dump out of state. Bob Hughey was the commissioner at the time, and so there was a lot going on, not necessarily glamorous but it was nuts and bolts. And, of course, we had the circumstance that visits government every three or four years in those days. That was a garbage strike. Every third year it would seem we had a garbage where everyone would hold their head and moan and groan about what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna have rats on the street. The garbage isn’t gonna be picked up, and after your fourth or fifth garbage strike, you tend to be calmer about how you handle it. Q: That’s gone away, that threat and that issue, hasn’t it? Michael Cole: Yes, but not because of anything other than a shift in jurisdiction from the BPU to DEP. Their concern always, both sides concern in any garbage strike, was could they pass on whatever wage increases they agreed to. So the battle really became could you get a predetermination by the BPU that they would allow a pass on of something in this range of increase. So they would go on a garbage strike to put pressure on the BPU. And you usually would work it out, but you had to involve- they had to have an official person from the State of New Jersey to make both sides feel comfortable in working it out, and that person couldn’t be the BPU ‘cause they would be the ultimate decision maker. So it usually fell to the attorney general to work it out. Q: Was deregulation a part of this issue? Michael Cole: Yes. That’s when jurisdiction over solid waste was shifted essentially from the BPU to DEP, and DEP really concerned itself with the environmental consequences of solid waste as opposed to the economic consequences. Q: How did the Department of Law and Public Safety differ under Irwin Kimmelman from what it had been under John Degnan? Michael Cole: I don’t think it differed very much at all. He had a new First Assistant for the first two years, Tom Greelish, who was a very nice guy. He had Dom Belsole instead of Ed Stier in the Division of Criminal Justice. And he had a new Director of Gaming Enforcement. It was no longer- it was, well, Bob Martinez or Mickey Brown. -14-

Q: Mickey Brown. Michael Cole: Mickey Brown followed Bob. And so Mickey was there, and you had Tom O’Brien of Morris County in there. But they were all basically good government type people, and so I thought it went along pretty much as it always has. Q: Kimmelman had a curious image among the press as a guy who maybe took the sense of authority that comes with being the chief law enforcement office in the state a little more seriously than some of his predecessors. Do you recall any of that? Michael Cole: I don’t know what that means. All I can tell you is that he was a person whose public image was essentially his career. He had been a judge. He had been a top flight litigator. He had been partner in a major firm, and he was a tough guy. I can tell you that he welcomed criticism and he welcomed expressions of concern, so he was going- if something was happening that I had any concern about, I would just go talk to him. We’d talk it out and I never had a problem. I was never dissatisfied with the end result. Q: I think there was something that he said once that called to mind Alexander Haig saying, “I’m in charge here,” but I don’t know what it was. Michael Cole: That’s not triggering anything. Q: Okay. Was he a good Attorney General? Michael Cole: Yes. I think he was. I think he delegated, you know, he delegated responsibilities to his division directors. I think the only way you really hurt the office is if you take away the authority of the divisions and make everybody operate through a central control point, which he didn’t do. Q: That’s thought to be one of the hallmarks of Kean, himself, was willingness to delegate. Michael Cole: Yes. It was. Q: Do you agree with that? Michael Cole: Yes. I do, very much so. He picked people he had confidence in, and he counted on them to do the job. So he gave, you know, he gave guidance. You knew his policy objectives. You knew what he wanted to accomplish, but he expected you to fill in the details and get it done. Q: So during the first Kean term, what were your highlights? Did you stay Director of the Division of Law, or did you move up to First Assistant? Michael Cole: I became First Assistant Attorney General in addition to being Director of the Division of Law. Q: Under Kimmelman? Michael Cole: Under Kimmelman. Tom Greelish resigned to accept the position with the United States Attorney’s Office. He became number two in the office when Hunt Dumont was the U. S. Attorney. Ultimately Tom became U. S. Attorney for some period of time. Q: Well, thinking back to that first term, when you were in the Division of Law, you said garbage strike. What else were the issues? Michael Cole: Congressional redistricting.

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Q: Redistricting. Michael Cole: Was the major issue. I’m drawing a blank. I know we did other things, Michael. Q: Let me throw out a few things and see if anything. These may overlap into the second term, but healthcare, capital reimbursement policy, civil service reform. Michael Cole: Second term. Q: South Jersey Port unification. Michael Cole: Second term. Q: College autonomy. Michael Cole: Second term. Q: Rainy Day Fund. Michael Cole: Second term. Q: Insurance reform. Michael Cole: Second term, third term, fourth term. Michael Cole: Oh, the other interesting case in the first term, we still had a number of government cases, the challenge to respective authority as between governor and legislature. And in the first term of Kean, we had the “Enourato” [Enorato v. NJ Building Authority. 182 N.J. Super. 58 (App. Div. 1981), aff'd, 90 N.J. 396 (1982)], case litigated, which was the Building Authority case which established the right of the State to issue debt that was what we would call subject to appropriation debt, and therefore we would say not debt in the constitutional sense. That was established in that first term. We also had the Line Item Veto. Q: Excuse me. What does that kind of debt authorize? What does that allow you to do? Michael Cole: Allows you to incur debt without voter approval. Q: But for what type of projects? Michael Cole: In the case of the Building Authority, it was for debt for the building or modernization of public buildings for use by government, that would be leased by government. So the lease, itself, constituted the security for the debt that was being issued. Q: And you were about to move onto another one? Michael Cole: Line Item Veto also took place during the first Kean term. That was the case that established the ability of the governor to line item any item of appropriation or language of appropriation, and reduce it. And that had never been established before. Q: It had been exercised but not legally. Michael Cole: It had been exercised continually for at least eight years, but had never been actually challenged, and had never been actually crystallized.

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Q: Do you recall who challenged it? Michael Cole: Oh, the Republicans. No, I’m sorry. That’s wrong. Democrats. Q: The Democrats challenged Governor Kean’s. Michael Cole: Use of it. Q: Use of it. And you took it to court? Michael Cole: Went to the Supreme Court, through the Appellate Division to the Supreme Court, and established that the governor could reduce any item of appropriation, any dollar amount, but also could eliminate any language that encumbered an appropriation. Q: Did you argue that case before the Supreme Court? Michael Cole: Yes. I did. Yes. The same day, I remember, I also argued the legislative veto case. Q: What was that case? Michael Cole: The case where the legislature had a right to reserve unto itself the power to veto rules and regulations adopted by State agencies by a vote of a single house. Q: What was the Executive Branch’s position on that? Michael Cole: It was unconstitutional, or to do that they’d have to amend the Constitution. Q: What did the court find? Michael Cole: They agreed with us, but they were able to amend the Constitution, so it is theoretically there. When a rule or reg is adopted, legislature theoretically can concur on a resolution. Without going to the governor, can overturn that rule or reg. Q: By a majority? Michael Cole: Yes, majority of each house. Q: You say that the Democrats brought that line item veto case. Who were the prominent Democrats of that time? Michael Cole: That time, Carmen Orechio was president of the Senate, and the Assembly was Alan Karcher was Speaker of the Assembly. Q: What were they each like? Michael Cole: They were different. Carmen Orechio was from Nutley , I believe. And he was the type of person who, if he gave you his word on something, he never deviated from it. He was not nearly as flashy as Alan. Alan was a truly remarkable guy. He was a Renaissance man in many ways. He spoke a number of languages. He was, I believe, if I recall this correctly, he was an opera buff, but he was a very tough politician in the standards of Middlesex County Democrats, which is what he was. Q: Did you like him? Michael Cole: I liked them both. I liked most of the people who I met down there be it Chris Jackman from Hudson -17-

County, Carmen Orechio, John Russo, they all brought an individual approach to things. But generally, if you were open minded, and you had an objective in mind which was something those who wanted to govern could accept, you could deal with them. Q: How much contact did you have with the governor from the position of First Assistant Attorney General during that first term? Michael Cole: The last two years of the first term quite a bit, because that’s when we had the motor vehicle crisis. Q: What was that crisis? Michael Cole: The best I remember that crisis was when we had invested what seemed like at the time an enormous amount of money, several million dollars, in a computer upgrade to make things theoretically faster and easier for Motor Vehicles. And I think we had hired Pricewaterhouse. That’s what I remember. And Pricwaterhouse had not done as good a job as they had promised to do, and the result was we spent a lot of money and had even slower computers than when we started. So we were scrambling to turn that around, and put in a fix. And we had a lot of legislative hearings going on at the time looking into it. I remember Tommy Foy, now deceased, but Tommy was, I believe, an Assemblyman at the time, and he chaired one legislative investigatory committee. I forget who his counterpart was in the senate, but we had both houses looking at what had happened here. Nothing untoward had happened. They had just not done the job. Their salespeople had promised more than their technical people could deliver, and I think what happened is two years later we had the system we thought we had bought originally at no additional cost. So I worked a lot with the governor at the time, because that was the number one issue. Governors have these informal polls that they have, and they’re based on mail coming into the governor’s office. What are people complaining about the most, and in those years Motor Vehicle was off the scale, was off the scale. And that became, actually when Cary Edwards became Attorney General, that became his number one priority was turning around Motor Vehicle, but it had been around for a number of years. Michael Aron: Tom Kean, some say, got off to a rocky start as governor. Do you recall any of that? Michael Cole: He was not well. He had back issues, I believe, the first six months he was governor, which pretty much kept him on his back trying to deal with those. He had severe budget issues as a carryover. In fact, he had to increase the number of taxes, which I think in hindsight he always regretted that he did, but he had to increase the sales tax and a number of other taxes. And that all took place in the first six months to a year, so I guess that would qualify as being defined as a rocky start. But thereafter things turned around and quickly, principally because the economy turns around, and New Jersey , like most states, everything revolves around the economy. If the economy is doing well, everybody feels good about themselves. The economy turned around, and he, you know, history was that he was, having been elected in the closest election in history, was reelected in a landslide over Peter Shapiro. Q: Did you have any involvement in that election? Michael Cole: No, other than the usual Attorney General involvement of being available to the court and the election officials. Q: By then did you have a rooting interest in Tom Kean? Michael Cole: Personal rooting interest? Yeah. I’m sure. Q: Yeah. Michael Cole: I liked him. I thought he made a lot of good decisions in his first term. His philosophy of social moderate to liberal, and fiscal conservatism was something that I thought made a lot of sense. Q: So he won in a landslide reelection, and you got a phone call from him on a Sunday, did you say? -18-

Michael Cole: It was- yeah. I believe it was a Sunday. Q: And what do you remember about that conversation? Michael Cole: It was short. He asked me if I’d be interested. I asked him did he have any concerns about my lack of political background. Did he have any concerns about my ability to deal with the legislature. And he said he had confidence that I could master it. And so I said “Yes.” Q: Right then and there, or you needed a day. Michael Cole: Right now. Right then and there. Q: Right then and there. What is the role of the counsel’s office in a governor’s office? How does it relate to the other units in the governor’s office? Michael Cole: It probably differs with each administration. In the second Kean term, the counsel’s office ran the budget, ran legislation, judicial and prosecutorial appointments. We did not have any role whatsoever in other appointments. That was the role of the Chief Of Staff’s office. We advised the governor on legal issues. In other administrations there may have been a greater dependence on the Attorney General’s office to advise the governor, but I had been in effect the lawyer for state government for so many years that it was a natural fit for me to transfer that responsibility to the counsel’s office. And you do whatever the governor wants you to do. You do the memos. You do the pass bill statements. You do the veto messages. You interact with the legislatures. You arrange for witnesses at hearings on bills. You present the governor’s position on bills in caucus. And you handle crises as they may come up that are beyond the authority of any single unit of government to handle. Q: It’s curious that you would come in and downsize the staff. These were roaringly good times. There wasn’t great budgetary pressure, I don’t imagine. Was this just a question of your personal style that you wanted? Michael Cole: It’s a management issue. How could you best manage it? And rather than having two people work on every DEP bill, I had confidence that one person could do it. And that being so, everyone knew there was one person they should go to and not try to split them apart. And it worked. I thought it worked. Q: Those names you reeled off earlier in the interview, most of them were known, have gone on to greatness of one sort or another. Michael Cole: Yeah. Most of them surpassed me, but they were a good group and they were fun to work with, because they didn’t have ego problems. Nobody had an ego problem. Q: Did you like going into the Governor’s Office everyday to work? Michael Cole: I got there at seven o'clock everyday. The guard, he would let me in at seven o'clock everyday. Q: Did you have a driver? Michael Cole: No. I didn’t live far away, Michael. Q: Where did you live? Michael Cole: I lived in Hopewell at the time, so I was within fifteen, twenty minutes. So I would go in and sometimes after the guard opened the door, you’d be surprised who wanders in at seven oh five, and you look up and there’s someone sitting across your desk, but it was fun. Q: Who were the other chiefs when you were Chief Counsel? Who were some? -19-

Michael Cole: Ed McGlynn was Chief of Staff, and Brenda Davis was Chief of Policy and Planning. Q: And Communications? Michael Cole: Carl Golden handled all the communications, at least from my standpoint. Q: Were there any turf wars between units of the Governor’s Office? Michael Cole: Not between us. Ed was happy to defer to me any questions on legislation, constitutional issues, and I was happy to defer to Ed on political appointments and things like that. And Brenda, Brenda’s job was to come up with ideas, and she had some good idea people herself. Q: Where was she from, do you recall? What qualified her to be the Governor’s Chief of Policy and Planning? Michael Cole: DEP, DEP. She didn’t come out of DEP. She may have come out of EPA, but she had some very good people. Ralph Izzo was one of her assistants. Q: Oh, really, the current head of PSE&G. Michael Cole: Current head of PSE&G, and the current vice president of PSE&G was also one of her assistants. I forget her name, Ann something or other. So she had some pretty interesting people who were policy wonks, you know, who liked to think through major policy decisions and try to formulate programs. And they would present them to the governor, and then the governor would decide whether to try to implement them. Q: Michael, when you think about your time as Chief Counsel to the governor, what policy issues rise to the top of your memory? Michael Cole: When I was Chief Counsel, we were involved in a lot of things. We did School Intervention, which was to give the Commissioner of Education the ability to take over a failing school district. That was a monumental legislative fight. I think we did three conditional vetoes before we finally got a bill that we could live with on that one. And the first time it was actually exercised was in the case of “ Jersey City .” We did Fresh Water Wetlands, which we supplied buffers and other protections for Fresh Water Wetlands. That, too, was a monumental legislative fight. We did Civil Service reform, which shouldn’t have been as hard as it was, because it really left most of the system intact. It just created a little flexibility for senior government people who wanted to get higher pay, more responsibility jobs while not losing all their Civil Service protection. So we carved a mechanism where they could essentially take a leave from Civil Service, go into the Senior Executive Service, and serve out what they wanted to do, and still come back. Q: Well, let me ask you about some of the ones you just brought up. The School Intervention, which I recall being called “The School Takeover Bill.” Michael Cole: Correct. Q: And the state would ultimately, you say Jersey City was first, but the state would ultimately take over three districts. Michael Cole: Paterson , Newark and Jersey City . Q: Right. And that was a hard fought win in the legislature to get legislators from local areas to agree to let the state take over a school district. Right? Michael Cole: It was extremely hard fought, because the Principal’s Union was against it. The NJEA was on the fence about it, ‘cause they saw potential jeopardy to teachers. The principals certainly felt they were in jeopardy. -20-

And we didn’t want to give up our prerogatives with respect to getting rid of bad teachers or bad principals, so it made an extremely difficult fight. Q: How about urban legislators? Did they fear it, too? Michael Cole: Yes, they did. And ultimately we were able to get the bill. After the second conditional veto, it was rejected by the legislature. Conditional veto was a way, Michael, that if they give you a bill you don’t like, you can rewrite the bill and give it to them, and usually they’ll put it right on the floor and not send it back to committee. And then they can accept it or reject it on the floor. After they had done that twice, we faced the task of starting all over again, or coming up with a compromise, so we came up with a compromise that coincidentally I thought made a lot of sense from the public interest standpoint. In those days, you didn’t have what we call current year funding, so if you were a school district and you wanted to build a school, you were on your own for the first year. The second year, state would start to reimburse you for some of the moneys you had expended, but the first year you were entirely on your own a hundred percent. So we compromised and we said whenever the state takes over a district, that district is eligible for current year funding of certain types of improvements, capital improvements, life, safety, health improvements, which I think won over a lot of them because that was one of the reasons the Newarks, the Jersey Citys, the Patersons could not put in improvements in schools. They had no money, so we were offering them money to do it today. Q: Is this one of those issues that twenty years later sort of come back full circle, and now everybody applauds when- not everybody, but a lot of people applaud when local people get to take back their school district and it hasn’t really changed a whole lot? Michael Cole: Yeah. I guess from your standpoint the question is whether the state did a good job or not. Q: I guess so. Michael Cole: In taking over those districts. Theoretically the state should have done a much better job, because it didn’t have to deal with the warring of local elements, you know. Theoretically it should have been above that fray and been able to do those things, ‘cause it only had advisory boards. It didn’t have anybody it had to report to, but I guess there were mixed feelings as to whether the state has done any better job than the locals would have done, and that’s too bad. Q: The Wetlands fight, it was the building community that was most upset about what you were trying to do? Michael Cole: It was the building community, ‘cause they were gonna lose developable property. The Wetlands was essentially about establishing buffers. So if you had a Fresh Water Wetlands stream, you couldn’t build within hundred and fifty, three hundred feet, depending what type of wetlands it was, of the buffer. So the building community looked at it we’re losing all this acreage that we can’t build on. And we looked at as that’s the minimum you need to protect your fresh water. So it became a colossal fight, and that resulted in the moratorium on building permits in Wetlands areas until there was legislation in place. Q: I think New Jersey was fairly far out in front of the rest of the nation on that. Michael Cole: Yeah, it was, and at the same time we were doing Fresh Water Wetlands, I’m reminded that we were also doing mandatory recycling at the same time, which was another fight, but more easily solved because there we could offer financial incentives to people who did recycle. So there was a lot a environmental work going on at the time. Q: Was auto insurance an issue? Michael Cole: Auto insurance is always an issue, or it was always an issue. Yeah, it was. Auto insurance in New Jersey had been, in those days, the product of setting up a new vehicle to provide insurance to bad drivers, and so -21-

that the insurance companies wouldn’t have to do it, and thereby premiums would be cheaper for the quote good drivers, at least those who weren’t as bad as the bad drivers. And invariably those failed. JUA was one of those. Q: Joint Underwriting Association. Michael Cole: Joint Underwriting Association. Then there was a successor to the JUA, and I forget what its initials were, but both of them resulted in colossal losses of money, which ultimately had to be absorbed in part by the state, and in part by the insurance companies paying off claims. And insurance in New Jersey usually came down to whether or not you were gonna be a no fault state or a fault state. And if you selected one as opposed to another, it was cheaper. And so that was a constant battle. That was constantly being revisited every year. Q: Civil Service Reform, who was against that? Michael Cole: The Civil Service unions. Q: The Public Employee unions? Michael Cole: Public Employee unions. Q: What were they afraid of? Michael Cole: They were afraid of losing their protections. They had a system where they understood it. They understood what their rights were, and they didn’t want to lose those rights. They considered themselves to have pressure little rights anyway, and government wanted more flexibility, wanted the ability to move people around, to move personnel around to where they were needed. So it was a classic management-employee fight. And it worked out, I think, in large part because Gene McCaffrey, who was head of the Department of Civil Service at the time, and he had a great working relationship with the unions, as did our labor commissioner, so they were able to win them over. Q: Who was your labor commissioner? Do you recall? Michael Cole: Charlie Serraino, Charlie Serraino, who was an older man, but had been around a long time and had a lot of trust in him by unions and others. So they were able to win over the unions, essentially convincing the unions we weren’t evil people. And even though we were getting a lot of power, we weren’t gonna use it in such a way as to decimate them. Michael Aron: In the second term of Kean, Chief Justice Robert Wilentz came up for lifetime tenure, or for tenure, I guess is the proper way of saying it. Michael Cole: Correct. Q: And Governor Kean renominated him. Michael Cole: Correct. Q: And the fight in the legislature over whether to confirm him was monumental, as I recall. Michael Cole: It was long. Q: It was long. Were you involved in that? Michael Cole: Yes.

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Q: What’s your recollection of that fight? Michael Cole: My recollection was this. It all revolved around where the chief justice lived. Do you live in New York or do you live in Perth Amboy ? He spent evenings and nights in New York , the Chief Justice said, because his wife at the time was ill, and he wanted to be by her. All her doctors were in New York , and came up in the legislature in the Judiciary Committee. I remember John Russo did the extraordinary step of stepping in as President of the Senate into the Judiciary Committee to ask only one question. “We understand your present situation with your wife, and we’re very sympathetic. I only have one question, that’s if things changed, there was no longer a need for your wife to be in New York , would you move back to New Jersey ?” And the chief wouldn’t answer it. He thought it was an inappropriate question, wouldn’t answer it. Q: His wife had cancer, a serious cancer, so maybe. Michael Cole: You said it. I didn’t want to say that. Q: Okay. Michael Cole: And her doctors were all in New York , probably at Columbia Presbyterian, but I’m not sure about that. So went forward on that basis, no answer, which alienated a number of senators, Republican and Democrat on both sides. And the ultimate resulted in Republicans not supporting him, maybe two or three. I think Bill Gormley supported him, and maybe two others. And a number of Democrats also deserted. I think there may have been twenty-three senate Democrats at the time. Q: The board was stuck at twenty to nineteen. Michael Cole: Twenty to nineteen. Q: One night for about three hours. Michael Cole: At least three hours, into the night. Q: And then Lee Laskin was prevailed upon by Tom Kean to approve the nomination, I believe. Michael Cole: We had a conference call with Lee Laskin. I think John Russo was on the call. Governor Kean was on the call, and it ultimately came down where the Chief Justice said that he had considered Russo’s question further and indeed, were it possible to do so, he would move back to New Jersey . That was enough for Lee Laskin to come on board. Q: Was it illegal for the Chief Justice to be sleeping in New York ? Michael Cole: Not at that time. Q: Today? Michael Cole: I don’t know. You’d have to do the math. We have a bill that Dick Zimmer authored, pushed through and became law, which I think defines it by where the majority of your time is spent, and also defines what counts as time and what doesn’t, so you have to actually sit down and do the math. I think theoretically you could sleep in New York , as long as you worked eighteen hours in New Jersey , ‘cause the majority of your time would be in New Jersey . So it’s a little more complicated than that. Q: That fight wasn’t really about where he slept. It was about ideology and decisions. Michael Cole: Certainly on the part of some, but don’t forget, at the end that twenty, stuck up there at twenty, -23-

included a lot of Democrats who, for one reason or another, thought he was being arrogant. Q: Did you think he was an arrogant man? Michael Cole: No. I thought he should have answered the question the first time. Q: The question about would you move back? Michael Cole: Yeah, yeah. Q: And he should have answered it in the affirmative? Michael Cole: The first time, and that would have ended it right there. But what happened as things start to brew, and as things brew, people get harder and harder feelings. Q: He became sort of defiant in front of that committee. Michael Cole: Sort of. Yeah, and didn’t have to be. And he thought he was answering to a higher principle. I’m sure that it was an inappropriate question. They shouldn’t be asking him hypothetical questions. And I’m sure he would also say he didn’t like one version of how that hypothetical would play out, things being different. Q: Who were the stars of the cabinet when you were in the Governor’s Office? Michael Cole: I thought Bob Hughey was a star. He was Commissioner of Environmental Protection. Ken Merin I thought was a star. He became Commissioner of Insurance the second term. Hazel was a force to be reckoned with. She held a lot of positions, but second term she was Commissioner of Transportation. Q: What does that mean when you smile and say “She was force to be reckoned with?” Michael Cole: Hazel is a very persuasive, energetic woman. And she will carry her case as far as it needs to be carried until she gets the hearing she thinks she deserves. She’s a, you know, powerful advocate for a position, and she certainly was someone who could be counted on. Second term, Feather O’Connor. I think it was Feather, was the treasurer. She was one of the brighter people that ever occupied that position. The first term we had two very good people, Mike Horn and Ken Biederman. But Hazel was- not Hazel. Feather was the entire second term. Thought she was extremely good. Cary , of course, was AG at the time. Q: How did he do as AG? Michael Cole: I think he did fine. He took on a cause which at the time I think everybody knew could be second guessed later on. That was the Drug Program, where he put in extremely harsh penalties for drug possession and use, including within a hundred, hundred and fifty feet of a school. And at the time, I think everybody knew that that was gonna result in a dramatic increase in the number of arrests, number of imprisonments, and term of imprisonment. Sentences were gonna be longer. There would be more of them, and that would lead to an exacerbation of the crowding crisis in New Jersey jails and prisons. And it did. Predictably it did, but Cary believed it was necessary. Q: He was also plotting a run for governor, and maybe the two intersected in some way.. Michael Cole: Never occurred to me. Q: Going back into the first term, the death penalty was brought back to New Jersey by Tom Kean. Michael Cole: The first year, the first year. -24-

Q: First year. You weren’t counsel then. You were over in the AG’s office, but what’s your recollection of that? Michael Cole: My recollection of it is it happened quickly. I guess it had been a campaign promise, to which there was pretty wide support in the legislature for bringing it back. So it happened quickly. My involvement was we were left with the task of trying to figure out how you would implement it, if you ever were to implement it. As it turns out, you never- that was all time wasted, ‘cause we never came close to implementing it, but we worried about how you did the witnesses, what the procedure was going to be for the death penalty. It’s gonna be drugs, what was it going to be, gas, drugs, whatever. So there were a lot of studies being undertaken. Who would the official witnesses be? Nuts and bolts, stuff with Bill Fauver, who also was the Commissioner of Corrections in the second, first and second Kean term, and also with Florio, as well. Q: How about Saul Cooperman? Was he another high profile? Michael Cole: He certainly was. Q: Education Commissioner. Michael Cole: Saul was a good guy. He was a man of principle. His number one priority was school intervention or takeover. He spent a lot of his time on that. It was one of his reforms that he thought had to be done, and he was certainly a star. People listened to him. People respected him. The education community, I think, really respected him. Q: What was a typical day as Chief Counsel like? Michael Cole: Typically I would start about seven. The quiet time would be seven to eight, eight thirty . From eight thirty to five , I would have a meeting at least every fifteen minutes with somebody, either somebody who was some member of the legislature who was looking for help with a bill, some member of the community. I would do all my judicial interviewing during that timeframe, as well. I interviewed every prospective candidate myself. So it was busy. The days were packed. I don’t think I ever took lunch while I was Chief Counsel. So the days were packed always. Q: How about on legislative days, were they more hectic for the counsel than days when the legislature was not in Trenton ? Michael Cole: Not really much different, except you saw really virtually no one but a member of the legislature during those days. They were lined up outside. When I was Chief Counsel is when they were renovating the State House, so they were in the old cafeteria, and in space that was uncomfortable for them, so they would come over, hang around, talk about their bills, talk about what we could do to help them. Q: By this point the Republicans had taken control of the Assembly. Michael Cole: Yes. They took control in ’86. Q: In ’86, but when Kean won his landslide. Michael Cole: Correct, swept in. Q: And Chuck Hardwick became the Assembly speaker. Michael Cole: That’s right. Q: What was he like?

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Michael Cole: He was doctrinaire, a pretty bright guy. I mean, his job was National Regulatory Counsel for Pfizer Drug. So he knew- he had to know the law and regulations of all the states that Pfizer operated in, because he would be the guy they would send out if there was a problem. So he was a bright guy. Chuck Hardwick was the speaker. Chuck Haytaian was the majority leader, and he was different. Q: What was he like? Michael Cole: He was aggressive. He would tell you exactly what he thought, and he would do exactly what he told you he was going to do. So you had the two Chucks, which I’m almost reminded of a- there was also a fellow named Jose Arango from Hudson County, who was swept in as a Republican Assemblyman from Hudson County, which is traditionally a Democratic county. And he was a young guy, and his first day in Trenton was when he was introduced to Chuck Hardwick, the speaker, and Chuck Haytaian, the majority leader. And they said, “And who are you?” And he said, “Jose, call me Chuck, Arango.” Q: Any other legislators from that time stand out? Michael Cole: A lot of them? Matty Feldman, Chris Jackman, John Lynch. Q: What did you think of John Lynch? Michael Cole: I liked John Lynch. I thought he was a legendary figure in government. I’m not gonna commenting on what happened to him later, but during those times he was a good government guy by and large. He was a guy you went to if you had a good government bill. I liked him. Some of the others. Q: Ray Lesniak. Michael Cole: Yeah. Ray was there. Ray had actually started in the Assembly, I guess, either in the first- either in the end of Byrne’s term, probably the end of Byrne’s term, because Ray’s first, big bill, I think, was the cleanup of toxic waste sites, superfund, superfund bill. I guess he was in the senate when I was Chief Counsel. He had his areas that he was expert in, he would work on, and he was very substantive, so he would generally produce a substantive bill. He wasn’t just someone who ran around screaming and yelling. Q: I want to try and wrap us up here. How successful was Tom Kean as Governor? Michael Cole: He was very successful, I thought. We did a lot of things without breaking the bank. We had money, it’s true, but we used the money I think wisely. We used it for- we didn’t enter into new programs which didn’t have an independent funding source. If you were looking to spend surplus money, it would be a capital program, generally, which are one-shot programs, so we weren’t making long term commitments of the state’s money. They were all short term. And yet he accomplished a lot in terms of reforms that he put into effect while he was there, you know, including some of the things we’ve talked about, but also, you know, Rainy Day Funds, and things like that. Q: Tell me about the Rainy Day Fund. Michael Cole: That was a dream of Senator Weiss, who was the Democratic Chair of Appropriations for years. Q: Larry Weiss. Michael Cole: Larry Weiss. He had always wanted to set aside some money for emergencies, and that sort of fit our philosophy, as well, so out of that was born the Rainy Day Fund, where we set aside, I think it was somewhere like eight hundred million of dollars to be used in the event there was a shortfall in revenue, or a excess need for money, like in terms of Medicaid and welfare programs generally needed more money than you could ever appropriate for them. So we created that fund, and it served us well while it lasted. You know, funds, things like that, as well as, -26-

you know, programs, employment programs for those on welfare, only work if you have money and jobs. So the Rainy Day Fund, I think, didn’t outlive the Kean administration, because it was spent. Q: Did Kean change over the eight years that you worked with him? Michael Cole: I don’t think so. I think he remained true to himself, which was he considered himself a middle of the road type of person. He wasn’t an ideologue. He could see both sides. Got along very well with the minority community all over the state, and that continue throughout his term of office. No other Republican, I think, could ever win in Hudson County the way he did and throughout the state against a candidate who was not an unpopular candidate. Peter Shapiro was an up and coming star in the Democratic Party. But Kean portrayed a sense of decency to the people, and the people responded to that. People were proud of him. This was your governor. This was someone you can be proud of. Q: What have you gone on to do since working in the Kean administration? Michael Cole: I’m just a country lawyer. Q: Country lawyer in Teaneck , the country of Teaneck , right? Michael Cole: Country of Teaneck . Q: Yes. Michael Cole: I had been in the country of Morristown before that. Q: Do government related work? Michael Cole: I do some government work, not an awful lot. I do mostly litigation, at both the trial and appellate levels. Q: You’re in the politically connected law firm of DeCotiis, etc., etc., etc. Michael Cole: I have heard that said. Q: Yes. When you look back on your service as Chief Counsel, is that a high point ? Michael Cole: Oh, I thought it was the best time I ever had, as it were. And a lot of issues, you had to handle them quickly. You couldn’t- no time for regret. You had to move on. You made the best decision you could based on the best information you could obtain, and you moved on. Q: Was it good training for what would come later in your career? Michael Cole: No, probably not, ‘cause later, you know, as a private lawyer, clients want you to devote all your time to their one, little problem, and they don’t want to hear that when you were in government you would handle twenty of those problems in a day. They just don’t want to hear that. They want to know that you’re devoting all of your time and effort to that problem. Q: Have things changed in Trenton , do you think, since the ‘80s in terms of the workings of government? Michael Cole: I’m not really there, but my sense is that it’s not the type of place where people go have a drink with one another after work. And throughout the time I was there, that was always true. People liked each other, genuinely liked each other, and would gather together and talk about problems, and sometimes that’s when things really got solved, but it’s much less of that now. It’s more I’m a D, you’re an R, and never the twain shall talk. So -27-

it’s a shame, and maybe we’re starting to undo that. We can only hope. Q: It’s a good note to leave it on. Michael Cole: Good. Q: Thanks. Michael Cole: Thanks, Michael.

#### End of Michael R. Cole Interview ####

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