We citizens of the Garden State received another wake-up call last week as morning radio blared the story of the arrest of 44 people, including two state legislators, three mayors and several other local officials, in a scheme in which cash "contributions" were traded for development approvals and other government favors.

This latest series of perp walks is on top of the more than 130 New Jersey officials that have already been convicted of various forms of political corruption in this new century - a century less than 10 years in the making.

While some progress has been made, our culture of corruption remains resilient and deeply rooted - particularly at the local level. Our strong state-level pay-to-play reform law, which restricts the trading of political contributions for lucrative government contracts and redevelopment approvals.,has begun to change the political culture at the state level.

Unfortunately, in too many municipalities and counties, the wild west of government contracting still exists. The nod-and-the-wink exchanging of government contracts, development approvals and other goodies in return for political contributions and even the occasional bag of cold hard cash is still very much alive and well.

Now is the time to act on local pay-to-play reform and apply the same limits in place at the state level to municipalities, counties and school boards. More money is spent at the county, municipal and school-board level than at the state level. Further, most redevelopment agreements are under the jurisdiction of local governments. Yet most New Jersey local government entities still award government contracts without the strong pay-to-play protections required to ensure cost-effectiveness, merit and integrity.

With federal stimulus money beginning to be spent by local governments throughout our state, it is important to ensure that this new source of money that is so critical to our economic recovery not be frittered away by waste and corruption.

Expanding our pay-to-play protections to the local level is an important and necessary step. So is continued aggressive law enforcement. But these measures alone are insufficient. As Special FBI Agent Weysan Dun said in the wake of last week's arrests, "It is time for the citizens of New Jersey to ask what do we need to do to wipe the spider web of corruption off the face of this state."

To put it simply, citizens need to step up and constructively participate in the governance of their hometowns, counties and state. New laws championed by the Citizens Campaign have increased New Jersey residents' ability to participate beyond the ballot and ensure better, more honest, and cost-effective government at all levels. These include the recently adopted Citizen Service Act, which creates a directory of vacancies and an open applications process for people interested in serving government boards and commissions, and the Party Democracy Act, which gives neighborhood-level party committee people the power to control candidate endorsements, platform priorities and the filling of vacancies in the state Legislature. These new avenues of constructive leadership - coupled with previous reforms, such as easy access to government records and the right to make proposals for positive change at government body meetings - provide a full range of tools for citizens to rebuild the integrity of New Jersey government.

Citizens can learn to use these new tools as part of the Citizens' Campaign's "Jersey Call to Service" - which aims to generate 5,000 new leaders who are not now part of the political establishment.

At the end of the day, it is up to us to replace the culture of corruption with a culture of service. We keep finding out the hard way what happens when we stay on the sidelines. As the old clich� rings true once more, government and politics are too important to be left to the politicians.

Harry Pozycki is the chairman of the Citizens' Campaign, an organization which devises innovative citizen empowerment reforms and teaches citizen leadership.