Greg Bean
Coda
Does it surprise anyone that the state’s new pay-to-play law has been in effect for less than a week, and already some people have figured a way around it?
On March 22, acting Gov. Richard Codey signed into law a measure prohibiting the awarding of state contracts worth $17,500 or more to anyone who had made a contribution to a candidate for governor, the Legislature, or a state or county party committee.
The law does nothing to control contributions and pay-to-play contracts at a local level, leaving municipalities across the state still struggling to enact their own versions of pay-to-play laws. And it does nothing to combat the practice of “wheeling,” which is the transfer of campaign money between political committees.
Say, for example, that South Eastford has a pay-to-play law, and so does North Wessex. Those laws prohibit people who make contributions to South Eastford politicians from getting municipal contracts, and ditto in North Wessex. It does not stop vendors in the South Eastford area from making contributions to political committees in North Wessex, however. And it does not stop the political committees in North Wessex from turning around and giving donations in the exact same amounts to South Eastford politicians. The South Eastford pols end up getting the money their local vendors donated, but only after it was washed through the North Wessex political committees.
Vendors in North Wessex, meanwhile, make their contributions to South Eastford committees, who then donate it back to North Wessex candidates.
Nifty, huh?
Anyway, by Friday, state watchdogs had made public a Democratic Party lawyer’s memo explaining how contractors can get around the brand-new pay-to-play law by giving contributions of up to $10,000 to the federal campaign fund of the Democratic State Committee instead of giving directly to the campaign funds of gubernatorial candidates, candidates for the Legislature and the like.
And that little gem after the law had been in effect for less than a week.
Can you imagine how creative these folks will become when they have a few months to think up some really inventive loopholes?
Call me cynical, but I don’t think any traditional pay-to-play law will ever be truly effective, and no run-of-the-mill pay-to-play law will get rid of the out-and-out payoffs and bribes that led to our recent round of indictments in Monmouth County.
That’s why I think it’s time for drastic action, a little “thinking outside the box,” if you will.
Here’s my modest proposal: Get rid of the middleman entirely, and let vendors who want state and local contracts make their seed-money contributions directly into the state’s general fund, earmarked for property tax relief in the form of educational funding.
How would it work? Simple.
Make it a law that no vendor, or potential vendor, or anyone with a potential vested interest can make any direct political contributions, ever. Require that politicians may only stock their political war chests with contributions from individual citizens, and cap those contributions at $100.
Then, when it’s time to award a contract at the state or local level, we apply three criteria.
• Is the vendor qualified to do the job?
• Is the vendor the lowest bidder for the job?
• Has the vendor promised the biggest contribution (bribe?) to the state’s educational fund?
Is that beautiful, or what?
Say Apex Construction wants to be awarded a contract of up to $400 million to build a new road from South Eastford to North Wessex, and so do competitors Bondo Construction and Quality Construction.
Say all three are qualified to do the job, but say Apex Construction and Quality Constructions tie for the lowest bid at $380 million.
How to pick a winner?
Say that as part of the bid process, Apex Construction promised to make a $10 million contribution to the state education fund, and Quality Construction promised a measly $8 million.
Our winner, and builder of the new $380 million road — Apex Construction!
I know this modest proposal will not sit too well with some people, particularly politicians who might have to run more frugal campaigns, but the way I see it, nearly everyone comes home a winner.
That $8.6 billion pot of school construction money that will soon run out unless the state finds a way to replenish the fund?
No problem. The contributions from every vendor fishing for a contract of any sort at the state, county or municipal level will fill that fund up in no time flat.
And speaking of flat. There are few communities in this state that haven’t felt the sting of flat or reduced contributions from the state toward municipal educational budgets, and the burden this creates for local taxpayers is immense. In my community of East Brunswick, for example, we’ve been hit with tax increases of at least 25 cents per $100 in property valuation for each of the last three years, all of it the result of hikes in educational spending. For 2005-2006, we’re looking at another 28-cent increase.
Because chances of changing the way schools are funded by amending the state constitution are negligible, why not get off taxpayers’ backs and let people who want to do business with the state, county or municipality pick up the tab? We’re never going to eliminate this behavior, so why not institutionalize it and let overburdened taxpayers get some benefit instead of politicians?
Why not indeed? This is such a good idea I’m surprised no one has thought of it before.
I’ll pass this column on to acting Gov. Codey and a few of our local legislators next week and let you know how it turns out.
Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.