While Secaucus Library Director Katherine Steffens was issuing an impassioned plea to the state Department of Transportation in March 2001 to get a critical waiver that would allow a billboard to be built for the Friends of the Library, records show that Mayor Dennis Elwell collected thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from well-connected consultants who would make money off the charitable project.
“This variance is the critical element necessary to bring a handicapped-accessible state-of-the-art library to the residents of Secaucus,” Steffens wrote to the DOT. “Without your intercession, our goal of providing this long overdue library facility may falter due to budgetary constraints.”
The waiver from the DOT was a critical piece in a complicated approval process in which local officials worked with some of the most prominent power-brokers in the state including then-consultant Geoff Perseslay (who was the former Hudson County administrator and jail warden) and Gary Taffet and Paul Levinsohn, two aides to then-gubernatorial candidate Jim McGreevey.
Taffet and Levinsohn shepherded the request through the various agencies necessary to get the approvals. U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie and a federal grand jury recently began looking into a state-level situation to determine if Taffet and Levinsohn used their influence as potential state cabinet members to get billboard approvals, and to determine if they ceased involvement in the business once they became members of Gov. McGreevey’s staff, as they should have.
As numerous published reports indicate, at the time that the Secaucus billboard plan was considered in 2001, the DOT was concerned about whether the project was created more to make billboard brokers like Taffet and Levinsohn money than to help supply finances to the Secaucus Friends of the Library.
The billboard deal was actually a creative way to furnish the new library. The town leased a small piece of property behind the Department of Public Works to the Friends of the Secaucus Library for $10 per year, and the library, in turn, subleased the land to a billboard company and was to reap the proceeds of about $3.25 million over 50 years.
Elwell said the town was looking to find a revenue source for the library, and that Levinsohn offered a way to do that.
“We in Secaucus did everything for the right reasons,” Elwell said. “Whatever dealings Levinsoln and Taffet may have had outside of Secaucus have nothing to do with us.”
Within six days of Steffens writing a letter requesting the waiver from the DOT – which was needed because billboards near the New Jersey Turnpike can’t be placed within a certain distance of each other – the political action committee for Elwell’s re-election in 2005 received payments from people intimately connected with the deal.
Team Elwell Committee received one payment of $2,200 from Vahan Gureghian, a partner in Obermayer, Redmann, Maxwell, Hippel, the Philadelphia law firm representing Matt Outdoor billboard company (for which Taffet and Levinsohn were sales representatives), and a payment of $2,200 from Gureghain’s wife, Danielle. Levinsohn brokered the billboard deal between Secaucus and Matt Outdoor.
Around the same time, the Team Elwell political action committee also received a $500 donation Geoff Perselay, who reportedly received consulting fees of $60,000 from the billboard company to help forge the connection between Levinsohn and Secaucus officials.
Also contributing to Elwell was Paul Wiener, legal partner of state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, who – according to reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer – helped with some of the billboard deals in the state. Lesniak is a contracted attorney for the town of Secaucus, handling some of its tax appeals cases.
At least one meeting between Levinsohn, Perselay and town officials took place in Secaucus.
“I know people look at my campaign. I reported it. I did nothing to mask that. If I had, that would have been illegal,” Elwell said last week. “I have also given a lot of that money to charities.”
Gureghian did not return phone calls made to his firm last week.
Gureghian has contributed to political campaigns routinely in Pennsylvania, and is reported as having a close relationship to Governor McGreevey. Political contributions from billboard developers have played a part in other billboard deals throughout the state, including a $60,000 donation to McGreevey’s Summer Concert Series while he was still mayor of Woodbridge in 1999, a fact that was reported last week by the Star-Ledger.
Library construction led to billboard deal
In order to avoid increasing the town’s debt when proposing the construction of the new library in 2000, town officials put together a financial package that included funds from the town’s capital improvement bond and a million dollars in savings the library had accumulated.
With no savings left after that, the library trustees lacked funds to provide furnishings for the new library once construction was completed. So, the town arranged the billboard scenario.
A similar arrangement was made for a second billboard near Kane Stadium that would fund the Secaucus Youth Alliance, a newly created not-for-profit to aid the town’s recreation programs. The arrangement would possibly aid in construction of a new recreation center.
Both billboards were to overlook the New Jersey Turnpike. The library billboard was expected to generate $3.25 million over 50 years, and the Kane Stadium billboard would generate $3 million over the same time period. Both not-for-profit groups would receive regular monthly payments.
Town officials initially hoped each body could leverage loans based on a consistent predictable income that would accomplish their goals.
Elwell, in encouraging the Friends of the Library to approve the project in July 2001, said, “I’m not saying the library wouldn’t have had furniture when it’s [the new library is] finished. But without something like [the billboard contract] in place, the town would have had to bond for the money to buy the furniture. This way the taxpayers won’t get hit with the burden.”
On March 24, 2002, the Secaucus Town Council had to bond for the furniture anyway when town officials discovered the groups could not leverage loans as expected.
At that time, Town Administrator Anthony Iacono believed that the billboard revenues could be used to pay back the municipal bond.
“If the Friends bonded [instead of the town doing it for them], they couldn’t get the same rate [that the town] could,” Elwell said. “If something went wrong with the billboard revenue, the Friends feared they would get stuck with a million dollar debt. They raise money from cake sales and book sales. It was never their intention to build a library from their cake sales. All they really wanted to do was give back to the community.”
So the town planned to bond and get paid back from the library’s billboard deal.
But it was determined that the library could not use the billboard revenues to pay back the town. In a report to the council and the press issued in 2003, Town Attorney Frank Leanza said using the billboard money to repay the town bond would be illegal.
Leanza said state law prohibits money from not-for-profits being inserted into the municipal budget as a revenue item. But the Friends of the Library can donate money to the library or donate items to the library purchased for library use.
When pressed to explain the change of view since the billboards were first proposed, Iacono said, “We thought we could do something when we first started, and found that we couldn’t.”
“We honestly thought the Friends could make payments to the town,” Elwell said. “We learned that they could turn over the money to the library and the library trustees could turn it over to the town.”
Billboards needed special approval
When the billboard deal was originally proposed, Secaucus had to get special approvals from the state Department of Transportation and the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.
It was because two billboards proposed would be within 1,000 feet of existing billboards along the New Jersey Turnpike that Secaucus had to get a waiver from the DOT.
According to two accounts published over the last few months, one in the Philadelphia Inquire and another in the Star-Ledger, DOT senior staff members debating the waiver in 2001 were concerned over whether the billboards were merely being created as a way to make money for billboard companies and their brokers.
The Inquirer, in a story published in March 2003, quoted William Norton, director of the department’s Division of Outdoor Advertising, as saying conversations with Secaucus officials produced conflicting explanations as to what the money from the billboards would be used for. Representatives from that office have since declined comment, as the matter is currently under investigation.
News accounts published earlier this year said staff members recommended that Secaucus report back in a year to show how the money was used. This stipulation was later dropped after Gov. Jim McGreevey was elected.
Iacono said a few weeks ago, “The commissioner granted the waiver because the money was going to a good cause.”
In 2001, the New Jersey Turnpike’s attorney opposed the billboards and raised objections to the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC), which needed to issue variances for the billboards. Because the billboards were near a toll plaza, the Turnpike Authority felt they would pose a dangerous distraction.
The NJMC issued the variances despite the objections. The Turnpike Authority appealed, but the appeal was voided by McGreevey after he took office in January, 2002.
A federal grand jury convened in June, 2003, and is looking into a variety of issues, including whether or not Taffet and Levinsohn used their influence as close aides to the McGreevey campaign make certain these and other billboard deals elsewhere in the state were approved.
Billboard concept came about through connections
Elwell said he was approached by a broker at the 2000 league of Municipalities Convention in Atlantic City seeking places along the Turnpike where billboards might be installed. At the time, Iacono said this was the same broker who helped connect Secaucus with its bus stop advertising contractor.
The Inquirer and other newspapers reported that the Secaucus billboard deal was the most lucrative of the 14 billboard deals Levinsohn and Taffet brokered in the state, raising questions among some Secaucus residents as to whether the two charities should have gotten better deals.
Former Board of Education Trustee Bill Donnelly, who has been involved in the billboard industry and has spoken before various billboard advertising seminars, claims Secaucus did not get enough from the deal.
“Outdoor advertising is fundamentally a commodity business over populated with grifters and hit-and-run artists,” Donnelly wrote in a letter to the editor of the Secaucus Reporter on Aug. 19, 2001.
Donnelly raised many of the same questions the staff of the DOT did, in questioning whether Secaucus could have received more money.
In response, Elwell disputed Donnelly’s facts, saying, “The people of Secaucus can be certain that we negotiated the best deal possible for the town.”
Billboard company agrees to pull alcohol ads
NextMedia has agreed to take down alcohol advertising from one of the two billboards on town property. The billboard, located behind the Department of Public Works building, has been leased to the billboard company by the Friends of the Secaucus Public Library despite restrictions against ads displaying alcohol or tobacco products.
Councilman John Bueckner brought up the matter at the June 23 Town Council meeting, showing the council photographs of the ads. He said this was the second of two advertisements for alcohol displayed on the site, despite a lease agreement with the Friends saying no such advertisements should appear.
Town Administrator Anthony Iacono agreed to contact NextMedia, and Ronald W. Tourtellot, real estate manager for NextMedia, agreed to remove the ads and keep them from reappearing.
“In our lease agreement, it stipulates no alcohol or tobacco products may be displayed, although industry standards consider alcohol hard liquors such as whiskey, vodka, etc.,” Tourtellot wrote in his response. The advertisements displayed on the billboard were for Budweiser beer.
“We will expedite the removal of the Budweiser beer display,” Tourtellot wrote. “We had coded out the location we maintain at Kane Stadium to exclude the display of any alcohol including beer ads as well, because of the Little League. The charting department did not have any such coding for the DPW location, and it was not viewed as being a problem.”
Tourtellot said the DPW billboard has been coded against these ads, including for beer, in the future. – Al Sullivan