Pay-to-play reform a partisan game

As the minority party in the New Jersey Legislature, Republicans have complained that Democrats are not serious about enacting pay-to-play reform at the state level.

In Burlington County, however, the roles are reversed, with the Democratic minority agitating for tougher restrictions on the practice.

The Democrats are hoping to break the Republicans' decades-long lock on most municipalities and the county government. So far, their efforts at pushing pay-to-play reform - the curbing of a practice in which campaign contributors receive government contracts - have had varying degrees of success.

In Cinnaminson, the most recent site of the pay-to-play wars, a group that included two Democratic candidates for the all-Republican township committee recently circulated a petition to put the issue of tougher campaign contribution limits for contractors on the ballot as a referendum question. They gathered close to 400 signatures.

Township Republicans scoffed at the proposal to limit contractors to contributing $300 to municipal candidates and municipal party committees, and $500 to county party committees, among other restrictions.

"Any candidate that grabs this and tries to describe this as being reform, I think it shows they have a real lack of understanding of how limited candidates already are in what they can and can't receive in contributions," said Cinnaminson Township Committeeman Anthony Minniti, a Republican.

Republicans pointed to an existing law that requires Cinnaminson to follow a "fair and open" contract-awarding process by bidding out contracts over $17,500.

Government still has plenty of discretion in such cases because under state law, professional services contracts don't have to go to the lowest bidder. Election records show that township engineer Remington & Vernick Engineers recently contributed $5,200, the legal limit, to Minniti and Mayor William "Ben" Young's campaigns. Parker McCay, which does legal work for the township, donated $750 this year.

Republicans made their opponents an offer: Neither would take any contributions from professionals or unions. The Democrats declined. Then, late last month, the township solicitor told the challengers that the township-committee form of government does not allow such referendum questions to be placed on the ballot by petition.

"I think ultimately, the taxpayers pay the price for the politically appointed jobs," said Linda Lamb, a Democrat who led the effort and also serves on the township school board.

Such calls for change are not uncommon from political outsiders.

"This seems to me certainly a central New Jersey issue, and the people who kind of benefit from pay-to-play are the 'in' people from both parties," said Richard Lau, a political science professor at Rutgers University. "So the 'out' party, wherever you are, is the one who's going to . . . oppose it."

Democrats have had better luck in Delran, where they won two council seats and the mayor's office in a May election. An ordinance similar to the Cinnaminson proposal received a first reading by the Township Council in August and is likely to be adopted this month, said Mayor Ken Paris, a Democrat who led the effort.

Republican Councilman Mark Macey supports the pay-to-play ban, calling the $158,149.67 spent on the election by both sides - nearly three-quarters of it by the GOP - to win offices that only pay between $2,200 and $2,500 apiece "sick."

But, he said, "as much as Cinnaminson is looking for reform, and as much as Delran is passing the strictest thing we can, there's a way around every one of these."

Paris, for his part, appointed a partner of CME Associates as the township engineer in July while he was championing the change, after the partner and others from the company gave his campaign $5,000. He said he did not know that the company - which gave a half-million dollars of contributions statewide in 2007, mostly to Democrats - was a contributor, and that many other recently appointed professionals did not donate.

Evesham enacted a strict ban in 2007 after three Democrats were elected to the Township Council that May.

But the 4-1 Democratic council quickly drew criticism for approving contracts to campaign contributors, as their Republican predecessors had, shortly before passing the ordinance. Since then, two municipal contractors gave money to a political action committee that the township's since-resigned solicitor said were not permitted. And municipal contractors have donated close to $10,000 to the county freeholder campaign of one of the Democratic council members, Chris Brown, and his running mate, Shamong Committeewoman Mary Anne Reinhart.

Now, Brown, also deputy mayor, has joined Reinhart in a bid for seats on the county's all-Republican Board of Freeholders to push for the county to adopt a similar pay-to-play ordinance.

"The reason why they're giving money toward my campaign is because they want a fair and level playing field," said Brown. "The playing field is completely unbalanced. You have the same contractors giving hundreds of thousand of dollars to the county GOP."

Last year in Mount Laurel, Tracy Riley, the lone Democrat on the Township Council, proposed pay-to-play restrictions. Republicans were unreceptive when the matter was debated at a council work session, saying the township already had an ordinance barring officeholders from accepting gifts from municipal contractors.

Riley now says pay-to-play reform is just one prong of government accountability and transparency, but Republicans in Mount Laurel and elsewhere say municipal pay-to-play bans will divert contractors' money to state party committees or political action committees, obscuring the fund-raising process.

And Macey worries that Delran's ordinance has a hole because it only bans the awarding of contracts to professionals who contributed to municipal candidates within the last year, though Delran doesn't have elections every year.

Another problem with the Democrats' proposals, some Republicans say, is hypocrisy.

"They say one thing but do another," said Layton. "The hypocrisy in all this should be outrageous to voters."

But Democrats say the Republicans simply don't want to change a system that has enabled their longtime reign. Public records show that Layton's Republican committee and the GOP county candidates, Freeholders Aubrey Fenton and Stacey Jordan and county clerk candidate Gary Woodend, have raised more than $130,000 from county contractors this year. The Republicans also help fund their campaigns most years by taking out loans partly backed by employees of county contractors.

In Cinnaminson, Democrats still want pay-to-play reform on their platform.

"I don't know that it's dead in the water yet," said Lamb. "It's still kind of swimming there. I'm trying to keep it afloat."

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