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THE UTN...My Favorite Subject ,

According to state law, all legal ads must be done in a minimum of two qualified newspapers of periodical publication , has a first class postal permit, has an office that is accessible to the general public Monday - Friday normal business hour and these items must be in effect for two years.

The state does NOT mandate which papers are used, they only mandates some of the items I mentioned above, this is for the Council to vote on during it's reorganization meeting.

City rejects 2nd unauthorized bill

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
By KEN THORBOURNE
JERSEY JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The Urban Times News is at it again.

The African American weekly has sent yet another bill to the city of Jersey City for publishing legal ads that it wasn't authorized to run, according to city officials. This time for $6,800.

The city, however, will not pay this one.

Last week, The Jersey Journal reported that the Urban Times News copied ads for a tax lien sale that originally ran in the Journal, published the ads in its newspaper, and then sent the city a bill for $15,300 - $1,100 more than the Journal charged for running the authorized ad.

Maureen Cosgrove, the city tax collector, balked at paying the bill, stating in an e-mail to various city honchos that she never authorized the Urban Times News to run the ads.

Carl Czaplicki, chief of staff to Mayor Jerramiah Healy, said he told Cosgrove to pay half the bill since one ad ran roughly a week before the sale. But, he said, she didn't have to pay for the ad that ran the day of the sale.

The City Council nonetheless approved full payment on Sept. 11.

This latest bill - for a sewer tax lien sale taking place tomorrow - will not be treated as generously.

"We are not going to pay it," said Stan H. Eason, a spokesman for the city. "We've instructed no one to pay for ads that are not properly obtained. Any copied ads will not be paid for by the city."

At a council caucus Monday, Business Administrator Brian O'Reilly said the city's policy for paying ads is simple: "If we don't have a contract with them, we don't have to pay them."

Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop asked O'Reilly to come up with a policy for how the city doles out non-legal ads, such as cultural events sponsored by the city.

According to state law, the city's legal ads must be published in The Jersey Journal as the largest English-language newspaper that's sold in the city, officials said.

Bobby Jackson, publisher of the Urban Times News, couldn't be reached for comment.

Essentially, pay-to-play is a problem that plagues nearly every municipality in New Jersey, for several reasons including: 1. too many municipalities, 2. lack of a dedicated television media market, 3. duel office holding, 4. part time elected officials.

Pay-to-play works like this:

Municipal governments subcontract out many jobs and tasks. For instance, instead of having an in-house lawyer, a city contracts out to a law firm to provide legal services. Theoretically, this means hiring a law firm with experience in different areas-- hiring a labor law firm to deal with labor issues, hiring a litigation firm if the city files a suit, or tax firm to issue bonds, ect., ect.. Now its not just the municipality that needs lawyers, but each department of the city, the school board, and the county. And its also not just lawyers. Accountants and civil engineers and construction companies and various other professions.

So there are also two ways of awarding contracts. There is a bidding process, where companies create proposals and submit bids. In those cases, the lowest bid is selected, with few exceptions. However, most of the professional services are awarded as no-bid contracts. That is, its not an open bid but rather an appointed position. In many municipalities, this includes positions like the municipal prosecutor, chosen by the mayor or the council or both the mayor and council, depending on the form of government. In some cases, positions are a flat fee for the year. In some cases its a flat fee per job. Other times its a preset hourly rate. Anyway, the point is, essentially the no-bid contracts are awarded by the mayor and council of a municipality, and for county level, the freeholders and/or the county executive, again, based on the form of government.

Come election season, all these elected officials need to raise money to pay for their electioneering efforts, the television and the junk mail and the turkeys. The average voter is very unlikely to contribute money to a political campaign. Higher office seekers have an easier time because people are motivated by idealism-- President, Governor, sometimes Senate-- average folks are motivated to contribute based on issues. But on the local city level, or even at the county level, there is little motivation for an average voter to contribute.

But guess who is willing to step up and contribute to political campaigns? The dozens of lawyers and engineers and accountants and whoever else is receiving money based on who controls local government. Again, these contractors essentially serve at the pleasure of the mayor and council. New mayors and new council people will very likely mean new appointees to these positions (although in some cases, some people will contribute to both the party that is in power and the party that is challenging that power, so they keep the contract no matter who wins).

Meanwhile, past reforms meant to curbed this system have only caused more problems. For instance, there are contribution limits set by the state, meaning there is a total amount any individual can give to a specific campaign. For an individual's campaign, the limit is currently $2,600.
(See the full chart here http://www.elec.state.nj.us/ForCandidates/elec_limits.html )

BUT, the limits on contributions only extend as far as each campaign. So a contractor can max out to the Mayor's campaign. But then the contractor can also give money to the municipal political party, and also the county political party, and then again to the state political party. So even though a Mayor may only be able to raise $2,600 to HIS campaign fund, the Mayor can ask his friends, i.e., contractors, to contribute to other election funds. To some extent, there have been some recent limits on this, which I'll talk about in a bit, but there are some other things that need to be discussed. Also, this is why the Mayor of Jersey City is often able to control who is Chairman of the county organization, and why Cunningham's rise as mayor was such a problem to the machine.

Anyway, beyond the contract assignments, there are also plenty of government jobs available, many of which "serve at the pleasure" of elected officials, meaning not protected by government unions. A lot of times these people do things like "community outreach" or "coordinate" or "direct" things, and they often work part time. These sorts of jobs are handed out to loyal party members-- the folks that do grunt work like holding signs and walking door to door, ect. But there are also jobs that are given to local community leaders. In return, community leaders make their neighbors go and vote for the right person on election day. As corrupt as this sounds, its not actually all bad. The community leader / crony is a conduit between a minority community and city hall, which without the cronyism, the particular population would probably be ignored. Either way, the 'political machines' provide local community leaders with jobs, and in return the community leaders provide the political machine votes on election day.

There are lots of people with part time jobs running around because of the pension system. The pension system requires a nominal salary each year to credit that year toward the pension system. I think its something like $3k a year, and then they whole year counts towards a pension. Pensions then pay off on the three highest consecutive yield years. Meaning, if you work part time for the city for 17 years, earn next to nothing, and then earn $100,000 for three years in a row, your 20 year pension pays out on the $100,000. So obviously all these people want to keep their part time jobs, which is why they help the organization that is in power. This is not exactly corruption, and its not exactly pay to play, but it contributes to the power of an organization and waste in government.

As far as pay-to-play, there has been alot of talk of changing the system. McGreevey's Pay-to-play reform-- that nasty little bit of legislation which was his parting F.U. to the county party bosses-- tried to fix the problem. In theory, any person who received state contracts worth a certain amount of money--$20K+ I believe, but I could be wrong-- were not able to contribute to state level campaigns, state level party organizations, or county level organizations. But guess what? They could still contribute to local campaigns and local party organizations. Local party organizations could than contribute to the county level organizations, so the legislation didn't really reduce the flow of money, only hid where it was going. Some municipalities have since enacted their own pay-to-play reforms, but its unlikely to happen some place like Jersey City where there is an entrenched party.

So basically in summary, Pay-to-Play is the contributions by contractors to elected officials' campaigns, who in turn award tax dollar contracts to contributers.

I'm a bit slow but figured out what the machine in JC does: it's fuelled by "pay-to-play" funds, designed to process other people's shit, and kicks-back to people who keep it running. Right?

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Martin Jackson was hired in 2000/2001 by the Former Mayor Glenn Cunningham not by L. Harvey Smith or the current Mayor. His father is Bobby Jackson who was the political power broker to our former Mayor Cunningham. His position was not appointed.
So, when Glenn left office his position was not terminated. He is not and never has been the director of that dept.

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I just read this article at the Journal's online site and I was hoping someone had posted it here. As Mugatu said, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" Why is Fulop the only person in our local government who will speak out about blatant pay-offs like this? I guess I should be glad there's one person who will do so, but why is there only one?

The council gets billed for ads no one authorized and agrees to pay more for them than even the authorized paper got?! The mayor feels free to play the race card because it's a black-owned paper?! This is insane. And we put up with it?

That must have been the paper they handed out for free at the Pathmark right before the election. It had a picture of Cunningham and Obama on the cover, obviously taken at the Obama fundraiser, where he would take pictures with anyone contributing to his campaign. It deceitfully implied that Obama endorses Cunningham. As furious as I was at the false advertising, I assumed it was paid for with Healy's machine money, I had no idea I was paying for it with my tax dollars.

How much more of this crap do we have to endure? What does that faker DavidKake have to say about Fulop now, compared to the rest of the garbage we have in City Hall?

Councilman,

Which are the two papers that the city uses for all sunshine and legal notices as mandated by state statute?

What other additional papers are being used?

GrovePath,
I am really not sure why you didn't post this article but it is certainly relevant with regards to some of the questions on other threads that have been discussed as of late. In reality this is just the tip of the iceberg however; this article in particular touches on everything from ethics, to the referendum, to how your tax tax dollars are spent, to the political culture in Hudson County.

Best regards
Steve

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Jersey City pays weekly for ad it copied and ran on its own
City pays weekly for tax list it copied, ran on own

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
By KEN THORBOURNE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
It's a novel way to make money.

Make copies of advertisements from one newspaper. Run the photocopied ads in your newspaper. Send the advertiser a bill and then watch the money roll in.

That's essentially what the Urban Times News, a free weekly distributed in Jersey City and Newark, did with legal ads for a city tax lien sale that originally ran in The Jersey Journal.

Bobby Jackson, the politically connected publisher of the African American weekly, acknowledges his newspaper published ads copied from The Jersey Journal. The only caveat Jackson added is that Carl Czaplicki, chief of staff for Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, told him it was all right.

But there's a problem with that explanation: Czaplicki says he never spoke to Jackson about the ads before they ran in his newspaper. Jackson couldn't be reached to respond to that assertion.

Nonetheless, the Urban Times is getting paid. The City Council voted last Tuesday to shell out $15,300 - $1,100 more than it paid The Jersey Journal - to pay the Urban Times for twice running the photocopied ads even though the second Urban Times ad ran the same day as the actual sale, June 28.

Czaplicki said he learned about the Urban Times request for payment when the city's tax collector, Maureen Cosgrove, received the unexpected bill.

A June 21 e-mail Cosgrove sent to several city officials, including Czaplicki, stated: "It has come to my attention that the Urban Times has published the Jersey City Tax Sale List scheduled for tax sale on June 28th. I did not authorize the publication. I did not send them the list.

"Based on the City Council resolution, they are not authorized to run our publication and do not meet the standards under state guidelines," she added.

According to state law, the city has to publish tax lien sale ads in a publication that is sold and also runs ads for city ordinances. The Urban Times is free and doesn't run the ads for city ordinances, city officials said. The city is permitted, however, to run additional ads in non-qualifying publications if it chooses, city attorneys said.

Eight days after receiving Cosgrove's memo, Czaplicki sent her a one-sentence e-mail: "Please be advised that the City of Jersey City, Tax Collector's Office may utilize the Urban Times publication for public notices."

Czaplicki said last week his e-mail to Cosgrove had to do with city ads in general.

About the tax sale ads, Czaplicki said he told Cosgrove she should pay for the first Urban Times ad, which ran on June 22 - even though no city official authorized it. But it was up to her whether she wanted to pay for the second ad that ran the day of the sale. Cosgrove didn't call back to comment.

At a council caucus Sept. 10, Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop blasted the payment as "political payback" for Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, noting Jackson was campaign manager for state Senate Democratic nominee Sandra Cunningham.

After a well-publicized rapprochement between Healy and Cunningham this summer, Healy's picture and press releases started showing up with regularity in the weekly.

In a statement, Healy responded: "Is Steve Fulop suggesting that we deny our free local weekly publications the ability to disseminate important public information by only advertising in The Jersey Journal?"

Jackson suggested Fulop was being racist. "His undergarment is showing," Jackson quipped in an earlier interview, referring to Fulop. "Steve Fulop's philosophy is to the make sure minority businesses don't do any business."

Fulop responded he is seeking equal treatment for every minority publication, not just this "political newspaper."

"It is taxpayers' dollars that the mayor is using as his personal political piggy bank," Fulop added.