Files reveal Birdsall engineering firm’s illegal campaign donations
Sunday June 23, 2013, 3:19 PM
BY CHRISTOPHER BAXTER
AP /STAR LEDGER
Associated Press
From 2008 to early 2012, Birdsall made more than 1,000 secret contributions worth $1.05 million to candidates and political groups of all stripes and in all corners of the state, according to a Star-Ledger analysis of the records.
During the same period, business disclosure reports show, Birdsall cashed in on more than $84 million in public contracts.
“This is exactly how pay-to-play works,” said Craig Holman, who helped draft New Jersey’s pay-to-play law and who now lobbies in Washington for Public Citizen, an advocacy group. “The one side that isn’t so far being penalized are the public officials who received these contributions. If they knowingly and willfully accepted them, they must be prosecuted.”
But Holman and other experts said criminal cases will be difficult to prove without hard evidence of a quid pro quo. No politician who received Birdsall’s secret money has been accused of any crime related to the donations. More than a dozen recipients interviewed by The Star-Ledger said they followed the law, gave Birdsall no special treatment in awarding contracts and knew nothing about the firm’s reimbursements to its employees.
“Do I know Birdsall donated money to our campaign? Yeah, they were the engineer in town,” said Brick Mayor Stephen Acropolis, a Republican, who records show received $6,000 in secret contributions. “But how do we, at the local level, know employees were told to give those checks, or were told they were going to get that money back and be reimbursed?”
Other recipients of the secret contributions listed in the records included Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, a Democratic boss in northern New Jersey, groups tied to South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross and Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and all of the current Ocean and Monmouth county freeholders.
Records show $900 in personal-check contributions went to the inaugural committee for Republican Gov. Chris Christie and $1,500 to the campaign of his Democratic predecessor, former Gov. Jon Corzine, but both governors publicly disclosed them to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission.
