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Running With Baggage

Mayor Eric Jackson is quoted in yesterday’s Trenton Times article by Jenna Pizzi saying that his Administration has “hit the ground running” during its first thirty days in office. Several new department directors have been hired; town hall meetings have been held around each of the wards, beginning what should be a regular dialog between citizens and City; and expressions of good will and support have poured in from around the state as everyone pulls for Trenton to climb out of the deep hole it is in.

There haven’t been a great deal of concrete actions taken, nor expressions of any new policies the Administration will pursue. But no one minds that for now. The Mayor says “We are laying the groundwork for a lot of things to come soon.” He is, quite appropriately, somewhat cautious in his approach during his first weeks in office. Trenton’s government is pretty much at rock bottom after four years of absolute hell.

One of the voices raised to support the new mayor and his team, quoted ion Ms. Pizzi’s article, is William Guhl, whose long and distinguished career in NJ municipal and state government lends his words a lot of credibility. He thinks that the new administration has already achieved a great success: “Certainly what the new mayor has done with his appointments and his demeanor and his commitment is restore confidence in the city administration.”

Confidence in the city’s administration. We need that desperately in Trenton, and I am heartily glad that we are making progress in earning that confidence back.

In the context of this sense of initial accomplishment, and in the atmosphere of all this good will and good wishes, that I have to say I find it unfortunate that there is still some baggage from the mayor’s campaign that threatens to dull some of the luster of the mayor’s new administration.

Last week, in another Times article by Jenna Pizzi, she reported a couple of questionable new campaign finance items revealed in the mayor’s post-election reporting filed with the NJ Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC). These items include what was noticed by Ms. Pizzi as contributions apparently exceeding the legal limit from a Newark law firm to Mr. Jackson; and what appeared to be either a duplicate contribution from the NJ Education Association, which would also exceed the legal limit, or what may have been a clerical error on the part of the Jackson campaign treasurer in recording a duplicate entry for the same legal contribution. As of the date of Ms. Pizzi’s article, it was not entirely clear which was the case. Upon being notified by The Times of these problems, a campaign spokesperson told Ms. Pizzi it would “amend the report” to ELEC if necessary.

The Jackson campaign had a number of reporting problems with ELEC throughout the entire 2014 election, some of these problems extending back to the mayor’s unsuccessful 2010 campaign. As Ms. Pizzi’s article reports, these new items indicate that these problems are not yet over for the Jackson campaign. The Times article did not discuss a few other matters that are unresolved in Mr. Jackson’s campaign financing that at the very least will cause additional embarrassment to his campaign. One of these unresolved matters is likely to impact official City business.

Back in April, I wrote about a number of contributions to Mr. Jackson’s campaign from former US Senator turned real estate investor Robert Torricelli, in his own name as well as his Woodrose Properties LLC that in the aggregate exceeded the legal maximum for such contributions by $1000. Since none of the Jackson campaign’s recent ELEC reporting, nor Ms. Pizzi’s article last week, indicate that this excess contribution was returned to Mr. Torricelli, one can only assume that this still needs to be addressed by the Jackson campaign.

The other matter involves the Woodbury law firm of Long Marmero & Associates LLP, and a Political Action Committee (PAC) closely associated with the firm, Initiate Civic Empowerment, a/k/a “ICE PAC.”

ICE PAC first drew my attention in April, when I noted a contribution from the PAC to Mr. Jackson of $8200, the legal maximum. At the time, I could find no ELEC report from this PAC stating the source of their funding and contributions, which I found troubling. I discussed the PAC again in early June, during the Trenton mayoral runoff, when I saw that the Long Marmero firm was under contract to the City of Trenton as one of many outside law firms working for the City. I suggested that the contribution from ICE PAC, whose Treasurer is Albert Marmero one of the name partners of Long Marmero, might represent a violation of Trenton’s municipal Pay-to-Play Ordinance. As it turned out, the work done for Trenton by the law firm was completed prior to the donation made to Mr. Jackson’s campaign. So there was no apparent pay-t0-play violation, at that time.

As it turns out, on June 3 – one day after I wrote my column questioning that contract – ICE PAC Treasurer/Long Marmero Treasurer Albert Marmero filed several financial reports with ELEC, including this one for the first quarter of 2014 which reports their contribution to Mr. Jackson’s campaign.

As of this week, it looks like we have a new situation. On the Docket for City Council’s scheduled session this Thursday August 7, proposed Council Resolution 14-490 calls for a new contract in the amount of $20,000 to be awarded to Long Marmero for “professional legal services regarding general municipal and defense litigation matters” on behalf of the City of Trenton.

By the fact that the closely-associated ICE PAC contributed $8200 to Mayor Jackson’s campaign only six months ago, I believe it is clearly the case that Long Marmero cannot be considered currently eligible to provide professional services to the City of Trenton under the terms of its Pay-to-Play Ordinance. Accordingly, Council must decline to grant this contract.

At $20,000, this is not a huge contract by any means. However, the City made a professional judgment on the merits of the firm’s professional qualifications that Long Marmero was best suited to provide the specific legal services for which the City would like to hire them, and it may be impossible to do so because of their PAC’s support of the mayor’s campaign. Remember, it was on these same grounds that Trenton’s City Attorney Marc McKithen canceled the Cooper Levenson law firm’s contract in 2011.

This puts us now into a situation where the internal conduct of the mayor’s campaign is now impacting the conduct of the City’s affairs. I expect Council to address this during Thursday’s meeting.

One can only hope that this will be an isolated instance as the new administration continues to establish itself, and that there will be no further instances of campaign business complicating city business. Otherwise, the Jackson Administration may find it difficult to continue its “running” pace if it is weighed down by campaign baggage.

2 comments to Running With Baggage

  • ed w

    I would not use the words “Town Hall”, more like lovefest for his honor, the breakout “groups” were heavily salted with his supporters. even having them(“Town Hall”) in churches and not at our libraries was problematic. If these churches want to get in politics, then they need to pay property taxes.

    the time to form these study groups was before the election and not after you get elected, its as if he and his staff don’t know what to do, and are now sniffing around for answers.

    there was some interfacing with his staff, which was marginally positive, although i came to question the mayor on his policies just as one would do at a real town hall meeting.

    as far as the recent play/pay revelations, from an ethical point of view, there is the letter of the law and there is the spirit of the law. When you are the mayor, there “can” be no difference.

    peace