Good to know New Jersey state government workers aren’t engaged in partisan politics during working hours.

Gov. Jon Corzine keeps saying he’s not running a campaign because he’s too busy governing. Apparently his staff didn’t get the memo. At 8:30 a.m. April 3, Corzine’s new deputy chief of staff, Mark Matzen, gathered a group of key agency staffers to go over ways to ensure their departments’ public statements and events were in sync with the governor’s (unofficial, so far) re-election campaign.
Matzen, according to two people familiar with what went on, told the group they need to keep in mind the campaign’s main themes and find events and programs that drive home those ideas. Matzen reiterated how important it is for commissioners and agency chiefs to stress the central plan of the Corzine effort to stay focused on the “Four Es’: economy, ethics, environment (and energy) and education.
The session in a conference room at the governor’s office was held with less than 24 hours notice, which went in an e-mail to officials at a number of Cabinet-level agencies and some others like the Public Advocate, Parole Board and Board of Public Utilities.
“This meeting is for selected representatives from the departments. There are no substitutes,” Matzen wrote. He explained that he would “be briefing you on our budget communication plan and how each of you can help.”
Asked about the session, Matzen told The Auditor “I don’t think there’s anything more I can say about (it).”

Asbury Park Press columnist Bob Ingle writes that the “Four Es” of a Corzine reelection campaign should be “Exorbitant taxation,” “Excess secrecy,” “Ethics abandonment,” “Expanding administration,” and a bonus “E” for “embarrassing.”

What, no “egregious”?