Council fine-tunes pay-to-play ordinance

BY CHRISTINE VARNO Staff Writer

BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH –– A pay-to-play ordinance could be introduced in Long Branch as soon as this month, according to the city council president.

“When I became president in January, I put [pay-to-play] on the agenda so the council could deal with the issue once and for all,” John Zambrano said in an interview following the April 12 council meeting.

“There was a feeling by the council in the beginning that a [pay-to-play] ordinance is not necessary, but it is.”

At the Feb. 8 workshop meeting that preceded the council meeting, Mayor Adam Schneider said the council was split on the need for a pay-to-play ordinance.

Zambrano said in an interview at that time, that pay-to-play would be a redundant law because the amount of money donated to political campaigns is already public information.

“I was not comfortable with voting on the pay-to-play ordinance that we were talking about [in Feb.],” Zambrano said. “It was not a fair law to both incumbents and newcomers.”

At the April 12 workshop session, Zambrano along with the other four council members, gave specific input to city attorney Jim Aaron to include changes to the pay-to-play ordinance that is scheduled to be introduced at the April 26 council meeting.

According to Zambrano, one of the changes includes:

“If someone violates [the pay-to-play ordinance] by giving too much money to a campaign, he will have a 30-day grace period [to get the money back],” he said. “If it happens again, then there will be a stiff penalty and if that person is already working in the city, they will lose their contract.

“This way, both newcomers and incumbents have to pay attention.”

Zambrano also suggested at the workshop session that someone should be elected to keep track of who is donating money and how much money each candidate is getting.

“[Elected people] cannot know everything,” Aaron said “but they can question [suspicious donations].”

He added, “the specifics [of the pay-to-play ordinance] can not be made public until the council votes on the ordinance and then it becomes public record.”

“I have always wanted a pay-to-play ordinance in place,” Zambrano said. “I was just tired of discussing one and getting nowhere.”

“[The council] is glad that we are finally going to do a vote on it.”