It's stating what should be obvious, but apparently isn't to Gov. Jon Corzine: The money in New Jersey's state budget belongs to the people. All the people.

In this Internet Age, there is no legitimate reason that a citizen shouldn't be able to sit down at a computer and quickly research how any state agency, authority or commission is spending taxpayer money.

Unfortunately, Corzine isn't helping voters access information. To the contrary, he has spent an indefensible amount of time and money trying to keep public information secret. As a result, the public is not getting the facts it needs to participate in governing as our Founding Fathers intended.

Recently, Republican senators asked for data that would show how the governor is adjusting spending to cope with an estimated $2.1 billion budget shortfall. Making a polite inquiry to the Corzine administration produced no results. So the Republican Senate Caucus filed an Open Public Records Act request.

Incredibly, the Corzine administration interpreted the records as saying that 17 senators representing more than 40 percent of the voters in this state have no right to basic information about state spending. For senators who need these facts to make intelligent voting decisions, there was no choice but to sue.

More importantly, the senators want the courts to affirm that voters have the right to all the facts when deciding how well their representatives dealt with a fiscal crisis, not just those facts the Corzine administration feels the public can handle. The governor called Republicans partisan when they objected to his unprecedented refusal to release public information about the budget. Respectfully, the governor isn't offended by partisanship — he's angry that Republicans have highlighted evidence of his deep misunderstanding of how democracy and open government should work.

Here are just a few examples of the Corzine administration's attempts to keep information from the public over the last three years:

Until Republicans filed a lawsuit, the governor refused to release an $800,000 taxpayer-financed study that explained several scenarios for "monetizing" state highways and raising tolls. The people paid for that study. They also, of course, own the toll roads. The governor should have released the study the minute he made a concrete proposal to refinance New Jersey Turnpike debt so the public could see the other options he had evaluated, but rejected.

The governor, claiming executive privilege, dragged his feet in releasing information about how more than $100 million controlled by Democratic legislative leaders was unconstitutionally dispensed in 2004 and 2005. If one of those leaders hadn't been on trial for corruption in 2008, forcing the governor to act, taxpayers may never have learned about the indiscriminate and secretive way their money was doled out.

The state treasurer and governor ignored written requests to explain how the state lost more than $115 million in less than four months by investing pension funds in Lehman Brothers. The investment came just four months before the investment bank went bankrupt. Sen. Joseph Pennacchio, R-Morris, after receiving no answer to three letters, filed an Open Records request. More than three months later, the treasurer has yet to release all but a few of the pertinent documents.

Other examples of secrecy by this administration abound, so it comes as no surprise that Republicans aren't the only ones complaining. Members of the press say the Corzine administration is parsimonious at best in providing access to information, especially about the budget and borrowing.

Republicans aren't just filing lawsuits. Pennacchio has introduced and I have co-sponsored Senate Bill 445 that would require all state financial data to be available on a complete and easy-to-use Web site. In his State of the State speech Jan. 13, Corzine said he would ask the state Comptroller to study the feasibility of S-445. Given the governor's unwillingness to embrace open government, we question whether he sincerely supports the Transparency in Government Act or has just undergone a temporary, election-year conversion. We urge him not to wait for the comptroller's opinion.

It's common sense that S-445 will pay dividends far in excess of the few thousand dollars it might take to build the Web site. The governor should renounce secrecy and start working to get S-445 passed. Maybe then he will have more credibility when he claims he is for open, honest government.

This opinion/editorial appeared in the Asbury Park Press on January 25, 2009.

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