A proposed pay-to-play ordinance was rebuffed by the Secaucus Town Council in a 3-4 vote last week following a contentious debate that was marked by shouting matches and personal insults.
“Pay to Play” is the frowned-upon practice in which contractors donate to political campaigns in the hope that it will help them get government work. It is illegal to directly giving someone a government contract in exchange for a political donation, but often, it is difficult to prove. So pay-to-play laws cut the possibility of that happening by saying that a vendor or contractor who donates above a certain amount cannot get a town contract for a certain period of time.
Councilman Gary Jeffas introduced the ordinance at Tuesday night’s council meeting, saying, “When people donate money, and then they get a contract, there is a general appearance that needs to be dealt with. Many municipalities have been moving forward to address that issue. And I think it’s time for us as a council to recognize that this is a growing issue that our constituents want us to address.”
Council members debated the measure, bringing three concerns to light: Whether it could be enforced; the fact that lawsuits have been brought in other towns over similar ordinances; and whether it makes sense to pass a local ordinance at this time when New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine might introduce his own pay-to-play legislation in the new year. The Secaucus ordinance – which had been drafted by a council faction including councilmen Jeffas, Michael Gonnelli, and John Bueckner – was shot down when Mayor Dennis Elwell, Deputy Mayor John Reilly, and councilmen John Shinnick and Richard Kane voted against it.
“It was a disappointment, although I can’t say we didn’t expect what we got,” Gonnelli said the day after the vote.
On Thursday, Elwell said, “After the meeting I did ask the town administrator and town attorney to take a look at what they were proposing. But the governor has made a commitment to change the laws and close some of the loopholes. I certainly believe that sometime in the first session of the legislature there’s going to be new legislation that’s going to deal with this. And if the law changes I will have absolutely no problem with obeying the laws and living under them.”
Language
As campaigns have become more expensive, individuals and businesses have donated large sums of money to candidates, political action committees (PACs), and parties in the hopes that they will be given special access to public contracts in exchange for their financial support. This practice has been widely criticized because it gives the impression that public contracts, paid with taxpayer dollars, are up for sale, and whenever a contract is given to political patrons, voters wonder whether they are getting the best value for their dollar. In light of this practice, all levels of government have been drafting laws to stem the awarding of public contracts to political donors.
The proposed legislation in Secaucus would have banned individuals who bid on Secaucus public contracts from making donations worth $300 or more to municipal candidates, PACs, or continuing political committees.
Groups of individuals, such as business partners or corporation principals, would have been similarly barred from making political donations over $2,000. Any public contractor found to be in violation of the law would have been disqualified from receiving a contract for four years.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Jeffas said the contribution limits would have applied to professional service contractors and vendors, not developers. The bill’s sponsors, he said, believed there needed to be a separate bill that dealt specifically with developers.
The debate
Some councilmen complained that they hadn’t really had a chance to look at the ordinance.
Less than a week before the council meeting, Gonnelli, Jeffas, and Bueckner issued a press release announcing that they would be introducing the ordinance. The language of the measure was not released until Tuesday, and even council members did not see the draft legislation until a 5 p.m. caucus session prior to the council meeting.
“I don’t legislate through the media,” Councilman Shinnick complained at the meeting. “I thought we were elected to do things through committee and to legislate through a consensus of this council. Instead, you send a press release. It’s in the paper before we know anything about this ordinance. Then you hand out an ordinance two minutes before we walked downstairs. That’s not fair.”
Jeffas responded that last time they tried to push a pay-to-play ordinance, it didn’t work.
“We tried to do this in a gentleman’s fashion” months ago, Jeffas said, “and it went down 4-3.”
And so it went again.
Downhill
After Jeffas introduced the bill, debate exploded.
Mayor Elwell said he did not want to act on any pay-to-play ordinances at the moment because it was his understanding that Gov. Corzine is going to draft his own legislation in early 2008. Elwell did not want Secaucus to pass something that would be either redundant or ultimately voided by a state law.
“How would you enforce pay-to-play legislation? You cannot,” Mayor Elwell said. “That is precisely why I said that if the state comes up with something – and they are assuring us now that they will – then my recommendation would be that we follow the state guidelines.”
Jeffas said later that there would be no problem with the town passing something now that could be superseded later.
“If a municipality passes something, and then the state comes along and does something and parts of the two laws are in conflict, then obviously the state law is going to prevail,” Jeffas said. “It happens all the time. The state put a mechanism in place for municipalities to create their own pay-to-play laws. There must have been a reason for that.” Shinnick was also concerned about possible legal challenges that could cost the town money to defend.
“Hoboken is already being sued,” Shinnick said at the meeting. “Do you want to run up legal fees for the town of Secaucus? If we pass an ordinance, and we have to hire attorneys to defend that, who’s paying for that? It’s going to be the taxpayers.”
What now?
The council’s Independent faction say they are not going to give up on a campaign promise they made when they ran for election.
“This issue is not coming off the table,” said Councilman Jeffas. “Timing-wise, I can’t say when we might revisit this. And of course I’ll have to sit down with the other Independents and we’ll have to discuss where we go from here. At this time we don’t have a set plan. But to my mind the developer issue still has to be dealt with.”
He added, “I don’t have the utmost confidence that the state is going to act on this in the near future. If, six months along, the state hasn’t acted and if it looks like pay-to-play is just lumbering along, then that might be another window of opportunity.”