This week we celebrate the Festival of Freedom, a celebration of rebirth and renewal. So naturally, this being New Jersey, we also contemplate, well, chutzpa and indifference.

You want indifference? We are now in the midst of the annual ritual of school board elections and the approval of municipal school budgets. Did you even know that? Tax day this year is just one day away from what is probably the next most important day in our financial life in New Jersey, and too many of us are indifferent. We'll fuss for hours looking for a few hundred dollars in deductions, but most New Jerseyans won't even participate in the process that consumes thousands of our hard-earned dollars – and more than half of your property tax bill – each year.

If the past is a guide, only 15 percent of eligible New Jersey voters will turn out for the school vote. And the ones who try are often frustrated by the fact that polls remains open only half the hours of general Election Day.

In typical New Jersey fashion, the system has been designed to work against you. School board and budget elections are held this time of year, as opposed to Election Day, supposedly to remove the influence of politics from the process. Instead, it is a process which lulls us into indifference.

You'd think that with so much at stake in the state with the highest property taxes in the nation, there would be public outcry over school budgets. Yet with a few notable exceptions, that is hardly ever the case.

Interested in voting? This year's annual school election day is Tuesday, April 17. Look in the mail for a sample ballot listing candidates, budget proposals, and additional ballot questions. Check your local newspaper for a summary of the school district's proposed budgets. For exact polling hours and locations, contact your local board of education or county clerk.

As for chutzpa, that one is easy. I can spell it in four words: state Senator Wayne Bryant. The Camden County Democrat faces a 20-count indictment, and if found guilty the 59-year-old could land in prison for up to 25 years.

And what chutzpa Bryant had. Every time we think we've seen the limits of greed, someone like Bryant comes along and breaks it. He is accused of using his power and influence as the Senate Budget Committee chair to get a no-show job with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in return for making sure it got millions of extra dollars in state funding. While records claimed to show that Bryant worked there teaching three full days a week, he was actually there no more than a half day per week and did no meaningful work at all.

Still, that "full-time" status allowed him to sock away state pension benefits.

And that was just one of his many alleged transgressions.

Hired by the Gloucester County Board of Social Services, he did the same thing. Over a four-year period, he worked just under 15 hours while raking in about $200,000 in pension-qualifying income.

In the end, his schemes allowed Bryant to nearly triple his state pension fraudulently, not to mention receiving the ill-gotten money itself.

That's chutzpa.

It's a trait shared by some state lawmakers who are considering a bill that would make the job of state legislators "full-time" employment. While that law would place limits on outside income and dual office holding, it also mistakenly assumes that getting the full-time attention of our folks in Trenton would actually be a good thing.

As I said, chutzpa and indifference.