The Morristown Town Council balked last year at approving an ordinance limiting pay-to-play for municipal elections. Supporters started a petition drive, got the ordinance on the ballot and voters, not surprisingly, approved it. We may see the same thing happen in Parsippany.
After being rebuffed by the council, a petition drive has garnered enough signatures to get an anti pay-to-play ordinance on the ballot this fall. The ordinance would limit contributions from vendors or "professional business'' entities to $300 for local candidates and to $500 for county political committees. Total contributions from professional firms would be capped at $2,500.
The council has refused to adopt the ordinance. Its reluctance is hard to understand. Why would the council not want to make a public condemnation of pay-to-play? That would be both good policy and good politics.
Now that the petition in Parsippany has enough signatures to get on the ballot, the council has another chance to do the right thing.
Ah, but the difficult thing is bringing the changes about. You know there will be push back, perhaps even from his own party
For instance, its clean image notwithstanding, even Republican Morris County is not immune to the problems Christie wants to end. There are always,
it seems, a number of freeholders (there are currently two of them) who retain their municipal jobs, and thereby, put themself in potential conflict. There are also Morris County elected officials who hold full-time public jobs. And as for pay-to-play
- the practice of vendors and professionals getting government contracts by making campaign donations ... we just saw the all-Republican council in
Parsippany refuse to adopt an ordinance that seeks to control
it. The council, of course, is not alone. The freeholders have refused to ban the practice as well, arguing, oddly, that it does not exist in Morris County. The observer is left to wonder why something that does not exist can't be banned.
