Pay - To - Play Law - Press Editorial

When Atlantic County adopted its pay-to-play law, which banned contributions to elected officials from contractors who do business with the county, it was hailed as a great advance in government integrity.
 

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County officials trumpeted the 2007 law, which prohibited the awarding of any county contract to companies or individuals who contributed more than $300 to a campaign by a county elected official. The law also limited the amount of campaign money candidates could receive from political groups outside the county, a process known as "wheeling."

But now that a Superior Court judge has found the county in violation of that law, the freeholders have decided to scrap the restrictions they were so proud of and go back to business pretty much as usual.

That is wrong-headed and disappointing, and it should signal to state lawmakers the need for a single law that governs contracts and political donations at all levels of government. The state Election Law Enforcement Commission has long called for such a law.

When the Legislature approved a pay-to-play ban regarding state contracts, it allowed towns and counties to come up with their own individual laws. And lawmakers - slyly - also gave towns and counties a loophole big enough to drive a county through: As long as contracts were awarded in a "fair and open" process, campaign contributions from the people getting the contracts would be allowed. That means elected officials simply have to advertise a contract before awarding it to whomever they like, including businesses that have contributed to their campaigns.

That's the system that Atlantic County's Republican-controlled freeholders now plan to enact - and it's no protection at all against the kind of back-scratching that these laws are supposed to prevent.

In December, Superior Court Judge Julio L. Mendez ruled that the county violated its pay-to-play law by awarding a contract to Ford-Scott and Associates, an Ocean City accounting firm that had contributed to the state Senate campaign of Republican Sheriff Frank Balles.

If, as Republican freeholders maintain, the county pay-to-play law was never meant to apply to campaigns for state offices, why not simply amend it to make the language clearer?

Freeholder Director Frank Formica's answer, that other aspects of the law might be challenged in court, is no answer at all.

It's clear that the freeholders simply don't want to have to live up to the strict pay-to-play guidelines in the 2007 law. They are letting down their constituents and themselves.

The freeholders' action makes clear that it is well past time for state lawmakers to adopt a strict, statewide pay-to-play law that cracks down on the practice of "wheeling," eliminates the "fair and open" loophole and ends the link between campaign donations and public contracts.

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