Editorial: Free to hold state tradition

It's hard to love a chosen freeholder. The trouble starts with the quirky title itself, which is prone to malicious mispronunciation - "freeloader," for example, or "frozen cheeseholder."

But many freeholders - the people elected to run New Jersey's counties - have mistakenly assumed that their problem ends with the title, too. Hence a growing movement to replace the colonial-era term with the humdrum "county commissioner," whereupon people will presumably forget everything else they don't like about freeholders. (Maybe the new title should be "Xfinityholder.")

Burlington County's freeholder board is one of two that have officially urged the state Legislature to change the term. Somerset County's freeholder director has joined in, lamenting "a great deal of misunderstanding ... as to what county government does and what a freeholder is."

Another Somerset freeholder confessed to being so mortified by the title - now found in no other state - that she scratched it off her name tag during a conference in Washington. Apparently, one too many fellow pols asked her, "What's a freeholder?"

Are you an awkward freeholder yearning to fit in? Then you'll welcome a bill introduced in the state Assembly last month, which would rechristen the 21 boards of chosen freeholders as "boards of county commissioners." One sponsor, Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D., Passaic), went so far as to predict it would "inspire accountability and transparency." He added, "Something as seemingly insignificant as a name change can accomplish a whole lot."

But perhaps more actual accomplishment is what the freeholder image really needs. The answer to the confusion about "what county government does" could be, well, doing something.

Instead, we are being offered a branding exercise, which is becoming a habit in New Jersey's public sector. The state's profligate Schools Construction Corp. became the Schools Development Authority. The sadistic DMV (Division of Motor Vehicles) went undercover as the MVC (Motor Vehicle Commission).

In those cases, though, the rebranding was at least accompanied by a substantive overhaul. While one Burlington freeholder has packaged the proposed renaming as one of several reforms, the Assembly bill offers nothing besides the new coat of semantic paint.

Perhaps the lamest rationale put forward for the rising freeholder phobia is that the term is "a racist thing," in the words of Assemblyman Charles Mainor (D., Hudson). This claim is based on the title's origin in colonial and English laws designating free-and-clear property owners, or freeholders, as the electorate; elected officials were therefore the chosen freeholders. Because these privileges were restricted to white men, the argument goes, we should be offended.

But it's not clear why that's any truer of freeholder than it is of mayor, senator, or any other title that has existed for centuries and been restricted to white men at one time.

Camden County, by the way, got its first female freeholder in 1930, and its first black freeholder in 1881. Mere etymology didn't keep the freeholders of past centuries from expanding and improving the meaning of the term. It's not stopping today's freeholders, either.