Fmr U.S. Rep Richard Zimmer Joins Board of CSI-NJ

The Common Sense Institute of New Jersey announced on August 9, 2013 that Dick Zimmer has been elected to its board. Hon. Zimmer represented New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was chosen by his colleagues to serve on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. He was three times named the most fiscally conservative member of Congress by the National Taxpayers Union.

“Having Dick join our board is a great honor,” said Jerry Cantrell, President and Chief Executive Officer of CSI•NJ. “His commitment to improving public policy in New Jersey, and in particular public education, will be a vast asset to our organization.”

Notably, Zimmer is the author of the federal Megan’s Law which requires parents to be notified when a convicted sex offender moves into their neighborhood. In 1996 and 2008, Zimmer was nominated by the New Jersey Republican Party to be its candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Prior to his election to Congress, Zimmer was a member of the New Jersey State Assembly, where he was chairman of the State Government Committee, and the State Senate, where he served on the Revenue, Finance and Appropriations Committee. He sponsored New Jersey’s original farmland preservation law and the legislation creating the state’s radon detection and remediation program.

After leaving Congress, Dick Zimmer joined the Princeton, N.J. office of Dechert. In addition to his law practice, Zimmer taught graduate students as a Lecturer in Public and International Affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. In 2010 Gov. Chris Christie appointed Zimmer to chair the New Jersey Privatization Task Force, which identified opportunities for hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, many of which have been implemented by the state. He currently is President of Zimmer Strategies, Inc.