Gov. Phil Murphy is facing pushback from a powerful Democratic rival and his predecessor, Chris Christie, after asking people who oversaw the sloppy awarding of tax breaks to resign.

But Murphy’s on the right track here. A new board would be more effective at the Economic Development Authority, which promised away billions in tax incentives without verifying that companies actually fulfilled their end of the deal and created the required jobs.

Most of these tax discounts have not yet been paid out. Let’s hope we can claw them back. Still, this is huge money, and it’s clear that we need greater vigilance and a fresh start, given the findings of an alarming state audit.

So far, only Chairman Laurence Downes has agreed to step down. Others on this board, which has eight public members, are refusing. The most powerful man in the Senate, Steve Sweeney, and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin should ask the four appointees they’re in charge of replacing to quit, too.

It’s an acknowledgement of how badly these folks collectively messed up. Murphy gets that, but neither Sweeney or Coughlin has joined his call for resignations. Given that the undeserved tax breaks are now under criminal investigation, Sweeney argues, it could hurt people’s reputations to be forced out under such a dark cloud.

“Telling them to resign at this point in time makes it look like someone did something wrong, and they might not have,” he said.

It’s true that there was intense political pressure to sign off on these awards under Christie, as the head of the incentives program at the time attested. Christie’s Attorney General signed off on them too, another problem the Legislative hearings should investigate.

The central issue is this was a badly designed program with no cap on awards. And the board was making decisions based on potentially falsified information provided by EDA staffers and companies.

Yet while individual board members could argue that they personally did nothing wrong, the fact remains that this is why we have boards, and this one failed in its core mission: oversight. A full, clean sweep is the best course.

A spokeswoman for the EDA, Erin Gold, told us, “I am not personally aware of a board member objecting to the EDA’s work.” And that is the bottom line here.

“What is the charge of the board, if it is not to ensure the proper administration of the authority?” as Brandon McKoy at New Jersey Policy Perspective argues. His former colleague, Jon Whiten, had long been sounding alarms about the explosion of subsidies: “That should have been at least cause to take a pause and say, what’s going on?”

Many EDA board members have ties to powerful players in New Jersey. That’s not unusual, but still concerning given the charge of favoritism toward politically connected corporations.

Charles Sarlo is the brother of Sen. Paul Sarlo, chair of the budget committee. Phil Alagia is chief of staff to Essex County political boss Joe DiVincenzo. Thomas Scrivo is Christie’s former chief counsel, and the law partner of Port Authority Chairman Kevin O’Toole. Fred Dumont, a union official, works on Sweeney’s staff.

Christie calls it a “partisan political assassination” for Murphy to demand the resignations of some board members and not others, including Democrats like Sarlo or Alagia. This is mostly hot air.

The board members Murphy asked to resign were all Republicans because they were gubernatorial appointees selected under Christie. The former governor had his picks, and now, Murphy has a right to his own.

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