By ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
The intent of an amendment to an existing pay-to-play ordinance in Tinton Falls may have been to strengthen the local law designed to stop the practice of awarding professional contracts to political contributors, but an awful lot of officials and residents didn’t see it that way.
The Borough Council, at Tuesday’s meeting, opted to toss out the amendement which would have lifted a cap on contributions coming from professionals to county/local political organizations.
“Our rules are stronger than the state’s,” said Mayor Peter Maclearie after the meeting. “The idea behind this was to strengthen those rules. Since this, however, was perceived differently, then there was no point in following through.”
At the meeting, attended by about 25 residents, Borough Attorney James Berube echoed Maclearie’s sentiment that the ordinance’s intent was to strengthen already stringent pay-to-play provisions. But that didn’t wash with the public or other officials.
They felt the ordinance had too many loopholes and would be difficult to enforce. Berube agreed that enforcement could be a problem.
The idea, Maclearie said, was that the ordinance was designed to keep more control over wheeling county political contributions back to the town.
Customarily, they are more difficult to track, he added.
“Our rules are stronger than the state’s,” said Mayor Peter Maclearie after the meeting. “The idea behind this was to strengthen those rules. Since this, however, was perceived differently, then there was no point in following through.”
Under a section entitled “Prohibition on Awarding Public Contracts to Certain Contributors,” the ordinance specified that “contributions made by a professional business entity or individual herein shall not constitute a violation” of the pay-to-play ordinance if that contribution is made to “the designated municipal county committee.”
There are conditions that must be met in order to make the contribution.
Those conditions are: that it must be in writing that the funds which go to the county “may not be usd by or on behalf of a Tinton Falls campaign committee of any candidate or holder of the public office having the ultimate responsibility for the award of any contract.”
The notice must be submitted to the borough clerk within 15 days of the contribution.
The chair of the county committee would also be required to file a written certification to the municipal clerk detailing the contribution and specifying that it will not be used to win favor of any politician in town.
The borough has three pay-to-play ordinances designed to put a halt to the practice of rewarding professionals who are political campaign contributors with sizeable contracts for work in town.
The ordiances were modeled after those designed by the statewide group Common Cause which lobbied against the practice.
Heather Taylor, a spokeswoman with the group, which is an arm of the Center for Civic Responsibility, Metuchen, said at the meeting that she felt the introduced Tinton Falls ordinance amendment would create a loophole in what was an otherwise stringent local law.
The law that is on the books caps professionals’ political contributions at $500. The penalty for violation is that those professionals would lose or be stopped from obtaining a contract with the borough for four years.
“The ordinance was introduced to get feedback from the public and officials,” Maclearie said. “That’s what we got. The question is really enforcement. It was unanimously struck down, so the issue will have to be revisited.”
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