We’ve never seen this kind of situation before in New Jersey.

Five of the 21 county prosecutors are serving in an acting, not permanent capacity, and many political and criminal justice observers are voicing concern, saying their “acting” status could ultimately impede their effectiveness.

Gov. Chris Christie recently named Gurbir Grewal as acting Bergen County prosecutor, Carolyn Murray has been acting prosecutor in Union for almost 5 years, Grace Park is acting Union County prosecutor, Angelo Onofri is serving as the acting Mercer County prosecutor and Chris Gramiccioni is acting Monmouth County Prosecutor.

So what’s the holdup keeping all of these people from assuming permanent roles?

According to Rider University political science professor Ben Dworkin the process for selecting permanent county prosecutors is fairly straightforward — the governor nominates someone, the state Senate reviews the candidate, and then that person confirmed.

But that hasn’t been happening lately.

“Sometimes the governor doesn’t submit their name to be considered, and simply places them in the position, and other times the Legislature hasn’t acted expeditiously to hear them,” he said. “The governor and the Legislature have to find a way to work together, otherwise the whole system breaks down. They’re not working together on this right now and that’s unfortunate.”

Dworkin said if someone is an acting prosecutor, the hope and expectation would be that things would be handled in the same fashion a permanent prosecutor, “but there are concerns — I mean the whole point of avoiding an 'acting' title is so that there’s no sense or even question of impropriety. You never want anyone questioning decisions about a case because someone is an acting rather than a full, five-year termed prosecutor.”

He stressed that all of the county prosecutors who are acting prosecutors are well qualified and eminent, but it’s unclear if the people of the Garden State will be under-served because they haven’t been given the title of permanent prosecutor.

“What you want to do is have justice that is blind, you want to have people not having any political consideration involved in what they do,” he said. “The fact that anyone’s decision as an acting prosecutor can be questioned precisely because he or she is an acting prosecutor is what you really want to avoid.”

Unfortunately, Dworkin said, this impasse may not get cleared up for quite a while.

“What we’re looking at is a lame-duck governor who’s running for president. You have political motivations involved with people on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “We saw a lot of working together during Chris Christie’s first couple of years as governor, but as we get to the last few years of the Christie administration that kind of bipartisanship and cooperation is going to be harder to come by.”

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