Murphy should take a lesson from Trump on salary

Apparently it's been a question for some time and now it's been answered. Rather curtly I would add. Gov. Phil Murphy will take the full salary of $175,000 for his work as governor.

He was in Newark talking with working-poor people who were telling him what it's like living on $8.60 an hour or not having paid sick days. It was called the "Minimum Wage and Paid Sick Leave Roundtable" and was held in the Ironbound section at a church. A reporter asked him if he would be accepting the salary as governor. Murphy acted put off and dismissed the question as "en vogue" and answered, "Yes, I will be accepting a salary."

When asked for clarification as to whether that meant he'd be accepting full salary or a diminished amount as Corzine had done he replied, "I answered the question - I'll take the salary for the job."

Wow. You had to speak so brusquely to a reporter doing his job? Was it so out of line to ask for that clarification? Considering Jon Corzine, also a filthy rich man from his own days at Goldman Sachs, accepted only $1 a year it was not out of line at all to seek the information.

Keep in mind Phil Murphy is extremely wealthy. His net worth was easily $50 million at the point Goldman Sachs had its IPO and by one estimate in Der Spiegel in 2009 his worth was in the range of several hundred million dollars when he exited the firm.

Is it fully within his rights to accept the salary? You bet it is. Yet this is someone who has tried to sound from humble roots with his constant story of sleeping in his parents room until the age of 9 and how fortunate he and Tammy are and how he wants to be the champion of the unfortunate. How does that come off as sincere when you could so easily do without that money? How does his facade of altruism play when he could take that $175,000 every year and donate it to programs that would help New Jersey?

You could take a lesson off a page from President Trump's playbook. Trump, also an incredibly wealthy man, could have accepted the salary while in the White House but he's donating it. His first quarter pay of $78,000 was donated to the National Park Service. His second quarter salary was given to the Department of Education in a check for $100,000. Third quarter was donated to Department of Health and Human Services' fight to combat the nation's opioid crisis.

But Murphy loathes Trump. So how about that hero of his, the president who's hand touched the same bible Murphy's did when both were sworn in, John F. Kennedy? As president he donated his salary to several charities such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, the United Negro College Fund and others.

While I understand there's nothing that legally compels Phil Murphy to give up his salary for the greater good, with as much money as he has amassed there's nothing that compels him not to. It would have been a nice start to the next four years to hear that he was forgoing his pay so that a program might be able to help another little boy who's still sleeping in his parents' bedroom.

More from New Jersey 101.5