The Aberdeen Democrats’ Latest Election Filing

I always look forward to the Aberdeen Democratic Executive Committee’s quarterly filings with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission. The filings often contain interesting tidbits and the latest filing doesn’t disappoint.

According to their 2nd quarterly report, the democrats have not received any political contributions this year (the amount on hand was left over from last year). This isn’t an election year so that would make sense except that, in 2006, the Executive Committee had raised $4,200 by this same point in time (see contributions in 1st quarter and 2nd quarter filings).

Then there’s the new party chairman, Bill Shenton. He succeeds longtime chairman Robert Axelrad who moved to Monroe. Shenton had replaced Councilwoman Gumbs as chairperson of the township’s planning board after she was elected to the town council. He earned a bit of “acclaim” for introducing the “McMansion Bill”, an ordinance that restricts the building height for homes. Unfortunately, he did this after being the swing vote that approved Ciaglia’s request to again subdivide a property, this time on Atlantic Avenue. (Notice the restriction is only on height. Shenton may have felt awkward asking for a size restriction since he lives in a 3200 square foot house.)

Once again, Councilman Vinci is still on the payroll, this time for “Expenses and Promotion” (page 7). He’s collecting over $2,000 a year in quarterly payments. Each payment takes place shortly after the previous quarter’s filing date and has been this way for years. I can’t tell if he’s simply taking money at the earliest opportunity or if he needs it to pay his property taxes.

Former Township Attorney Norman Kauff is still running the show through his wife’s name. Judith Kauff is still the person who signs the checks. Her name had disappeared from last quarter’s filing but it was likely just an oversight.

However, the one item that truly caught my attention was a $250 payment to Charles Uliano (page 7). Looks like they bought an hour of time from the former Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor. Why would the local Democratic Party need a consultation with the former prosecutor? Makes you wonder.

So, a new party chairman, zero contributions, and a one-hour consultation with a former assistant county prosecutor. Meanwhile, Kauff and Vinci are still up to their old games. Yup, the more things change, the more they stay the same. >>> Read more!

All Roads Lead to Norm

Like all municipalities, Aberdeen Township frequently awards contracts for professional services in a no-bid process. After all, you wouldn’t hire a lawyer simply because he was the cheapest. The vast majority of vendors providing professional services were selected based upon ability, reputation, and cost. However, a large number, who are nonetheless competent, appear to have been awarded contracts based upon their links to Norman Kauff.

Below is a list of current vendors with clear ties to Norman Kauff. This, in itself, does not imply that they have done inferior work or overcharged the township. But it does beg the question of whether the township could have made a better choice.

CME Associates, Township Engineer – As previously detailed, CME Associates is the single largest contributor to the Aberdeen Democratic Executive Committee, a local political organization controlled by Norman Kauff through his wife, Judith.

Coppola and Coppola, Township Planner – Also a significant contributor to the Aberdeen Democratic Executive Committee.

Daniel McCarthy, Township Attorney – His firm, Rogut, McCarthy, and Troy, have Norman Kauff on retainer. McCarthy also serves Hazlet and Manalapan; both municipalities had earlier retained Norman Kauff.

Marc Schram, Public Defender – He maintains his practice at Airport Plaza, the strip mall owned by Vic Scudiery, Chairman of the Monmouth Democratic Party. Norman Kauff maintains an office at Airport Plaza as well and sometimes retains Schram to represent him.

Marc Leckstein, Planning Board and Zoning Board Attorney – In addition to being a contributor to the local Democratic Party, was once Norman Kauff’s law partner.

Allen Falk, Township Prosecutor – Not only a donor to the local democrats, like McCarthy, he too has been retained by Manalapan, Norman Kauff’s old stomping grounds.

Tom Fallon, Township Auditor – His father, a former treasurer for the Monmouth County Democratic Party, donated to the local Democratic Party until he went to jail for bribing a public official. Tom's office is at Airport Plaza as well.

Bill Parness, Public Relations – As stated on his website, he began serving Aberdeen in 1999, the year after Mayor Sobel took office. He’s also Norman Kauff’s neighbor on Justice Lane.

Being a friend of Norm isn’t a disqualifying factor, nor does it suggest that the vendor has engaged in any impropriety, but Norm sure does have a lot of friends serving the township. >>> Read more!

Aberdeen's Inflated Pensions

Riddle me this:

• Whose retired chief of police has the highest pension of any police officer in Monmouth County?
• Whose retired town manager has the highest pension of any municipal administrator in Monmouth County?
• Whose retired township attorney has the highest pension of any municipal attorney in Monmouth County?

If you’ve answered Aberdeen Township to all of the above, you’re a winner. Unless, of course, you actually live in Aberdeen.

Pension costs in Aberdeen are skyrocketing. In the past two years, pension expenditures for policemen and firemen have leapt 147% from $238,883 in 2006 to $589,487 in 2008. During that same period, pension costs for personnel have ballooned 155% from $51,558 to $131,669.

Township officials have blamed the state for these astronomic hikes. True but it’s not the whole truth.

Retired Chief of Police, Joe Kelly, receives an annual pension of $104,034, more than any other retired police officer in Monmouth County.

Former town manager, Mark Coren, has an annual pension of $82,138, more than any other town manager in Monmouth County. Like Kelly, Coren also receives free medical for life.

Then there’s Mayor Sobel’s “close personal friend” and former township attorney, Norman Kauff. He gets $49,015 a year from his government pension.

Pension benefits are calculated by the following formula – (Years of Service) / (55) X (Average Salary of the Last 3 Years). Any town can easily game the system by simply inflating salaries during the last three years of service.

For example, Mark Coren’s average salary from 2003 thru 2005 was $145,679. That figure isn’t only 13% higher than Stuart Brown’s 2008 salary of $129,000, it also exceeds the current pay range of $95,000 -145,000 for a township manager. Mark Coren and the town council were able to augment his pension by simply expanding the township manager pay range to $165,685 and then reducing that cap after hiring Brown.

During Joe Kelly’s final years, he not only got a pay hike, he took another job, teaching a Criminal Justice course at Monmouth University. (On RateMyProfessor.com he gets top marks for being an easy “A”.) All that work, it’s no wonder he developed a reputation for taking power naps in his squad car. His average salary in his last 3 years was $148,620. The current salary cap for chief of police is $140,000.

Norman Kauff gets the prize for highest pension per hours actually worked. During his tenure as Hazlet’s “special counsel” he received the township attorney’s pension contributions, even though that role was being performed by another attorney at his then firm, DeCotiis, FitzPatrick, Cole and Wisler.

Next time the town council complains about pension costs, let’s hope they have the honesty to acknowledge their share of the blame. Then again, asking for honesty from this town council might be asking for too much. >>> Read more!

Campaign Finance Fraud in Aberdeen

The Democratic Party in Aberdeen always maintains two political organizations – a Continuing Political Committee (CPC) and a Joint Candidates Committee. The first is perennially in business while the second only exists for a specific election and is then terminated. In Aberdeen, the Democratic CPC is the Aberdeen Democratic Executive Committee. Each year, they raise money, primarily from outside contributors seeking Pay-to-Play, and then use or distribute that money for political activities. And each election cycle, some of that money is misspent or disappears.

According to filings with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC), the Aberdeen Democratic Executive Committee made three contributions to Mayor Sobel’s Aberdeen Dem Campaign 2005 - $10,000 on 10/23, $10,000 on 10/25, and $3,000 on 11/7 (see attached). That last donation was never recorded by Sobel’s campaign(see attached). This wasn’t an oversight in reporting – the campaign never deposited the money. The filings show a net deposit, following total receipts and expenditures, of $189.55, which was promptly withdrawn when the bank account was closed. If the campaign did receive that money, there’s no mention of any expenditures to account for it.

Yet, the executive committee did withdraw that money because otherwise their financial records wouldn’t match their filings. Where did the money go? Can’t say. But it wasn’t a one-time occurrence.

In 2007, filings show the executive committee made several donations to the Aberdeen Dem Campaign 2007, including a $1,000 donation made by wire on 11/28 (see attached). Once again, there’s no record of the Dem Campaign having received it by their last filing on 12/3 (see attached). In fact, on 12/3 they re-filed the same numbers from 10/31 (see attached).

Meanwhile, these same filings show the Executive Committee paying Councilman Vinci $3,510 for expenses and consulting fees during the 2006-2007 period (see attached). In other words, Councilman Vinci was paid consulting fees by the local Democratic Party during his own re-election campaign. In fact, he was the committee’s single largest expense aside from direct contributions to the campaign itself.

As for the individual responsible for the Executive Committee’s finances, there’s only one name that is consistently on all filings as being authorized to sign checks and execute bank transactions – Judith Kauff, a.k.a. the wife of Norman Kauff (see attached).

Do I hear bells? >>> Read more!

It Pays to Play for CME Associates

On October 10th, 2007, the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission released its Pay-to-Play online database. The state defines Pay-to-Play as “[c]ontributions by for-profit business entities that have or are seeking New Jersey government contracts.” Of the 1775 political contributors who filed, Aberdeen Township’s engineer, CME Associates, is #3 on the list.

Government contracts are normally awarded to the lowest qualified bid. The major exception is in the area of professional services, which are deemed too complex to simply award to the lowest bidder (you don’t pick doctors and lawyers based upon who’s cheapest). Aberdeen adheres to the “Fair and Open” process which allows anyone, no matter how much money they’ve given to the officeholders, to bid for business, as long as the process is open to public review.

In 2006, the only year available in the online database, the three largest participants in Pay-to-Play were engineering firms. CME Associates was the third largest – they contributed $404,899 and won $19.9 million in government contracts. Law firms were the second largest group to engage in Pay-to-Play. Kudos to Norman Kauff whose firm, DeCotiis, FitzPatrick, Cole & Wisler, was number one in government contracts ($12 million) but only third in political contributions ($190,486). It’s no surprise that municipalities that hire Kauff also prefer to do business with CME Associates.

Despite the large figures, these numbers grossly underestimate the true level of contributions and government contracts. For example, they don’t count the $50,000 CME Associates donated to the Democratic Legislative Leadership Committee in 2006. Nor do they include the hundreds of thousands of dollars CME Associates collects in “fees” directly from the local residents and businesses in Aberdeen Township each year.

Over the past decade, CME Associates has donated more than $60,000 to the Aberdeen Democratic Executive Committee, not including any monies that may have been “wheeled” through the Monmouth County Democratic Party or given “off the books”. During that same period, CME Associates has been paid back two hundred-fold.

I recently received a copy of all vendor payments to CME Associates from January 7th, 2005, to March 18th, 2008. During that time, the township made 2,597 payments to CME Associates, totaling $3,692,445.72. Much of that money comes directly from the township, such as the $229,595 paid on January 12th, 2008, for road improvements, but most payments come from the locals.

The game works as follows – the township continually expands the range of permits that require review by an engineer. The homeowner/business owner is then required to place funds in escrow to cover any future expenses. CME Associates will drain the escrow account of all funds before they certify the property. The system becomes a scam as residents and local businesses are forced to pay for unwarranted services to a company that is the governing body’s single largest contributor.

If unnecessary and inflated payments to CME Associates were added to the tax levy, Aberdeen Township would have the highest tax rate in Monmouth County, compared to the number three position it now holds.

For less than $8,000 a year in political contributions, CME Associates gets to take over a million dollars a year from the township. Looks like Mayor Sobel has pimped out the township for “professional services” in a no-bid contract. >>> Read more!

A Norman Kauff Bedtime Story

My dear readers, I know how much you like to read about Matawan and Aberdeen but I hope you’ll forgive me if I digress a bit, today. You see, this story takes place in a far away land called Manalapan.

A long time ago, in the year 2000, Mayor Stuart Moskovitz of Manalapan complained that the township attorney, a man named Norman Kauff, was charging too much money. Yes, he accused our precious Norman Kauff who served so many years as Aberdeen Township’s attorney.

Anyways, the mayor complained and kvetched and carped until Kauff stopped coming to town meetings at all. But this just made Mayor Moskovitz even angrier. After all, Norman Kauff was still getting paid, both salary and pension contributions, even though he was no longer coming to town meetings.

But Mr. Kauff didn’t see any problem at all. In fact, only two years later, Hazlet had agreed to hire Mr. Kauff as their township attorney even though he wouldn’t be attending their town meetings either. No, he would send a subordinate to attend those long and boring public forums.

Well, Mayor Moskovitz kept complaining until Norman Kauff quit. That same year, Moskovitz lost reelection but a few years later, in 2005, he was appointed the township’s attorney. That appointment only lasted one year. But I jump ahead of myself.

After Kauff quit, he got a job for his good friend, Daniel McCarthy, as an attorney on the township planning board and as special counsel. Yes, this is the same Daniel McCarthy who replaced Kauff as Aberdeen Township’s attorney.

Daniel McCarthy, with some encouragement from Kauff, began agitating for Moskovitz’s dismissal. As township attorney, Moscowitz had overseen Manalapan’s purchase of two homes in front of the Manalapan Recreation Center. At the time of the transaction, there was no problem and New Jersey’s Green Acre’s program contributed $250,000 to the purchase. However, the township engineer, Greg Valesi, now claimed the site required an environmental cleanup that his company would be happy to perform; the homes had an underground storage tank and some pesticides were found on the grass.

Mr. Valesi works for a small company called CME Associates. Yes, the same CME Associates that serves as Aberdeen’s engineers. Original cost estimates for the cleanup were $18,000 but they’ve now risen to $110,000.

McCarthy then convinced the township to sue Moskovitz for damages.

I don’t know about the next part of the story but Moskovitz claims that the new township attorney, Caroline Casagrande, and the new mayor, Andrew Lucas, were reluctant to pursue the case but Kauff promised them party support for higher office. I don’t know how Kauff, a strongman in the Monmouth Democratic Party, could help two republicans but Casagrande and Lucas did gain their party’s nominations.

Casagrande won election for State Assemblywoman of the 12th district. Lucas, at age 29, became one of the youngest people to ever receive the republican nomination for Freeholder in Monmouth County. He was also the first republican in over 20 years to lose the election.

Shortly after her victory, Casagrande founded a new law firm, Menna, Supko & Casagrande. Yes, that’s the same Pasquale Menna who’s the borough attorney for Matawan. Pasquale Menna was formerly of the law firm Kauff & Menna, as in Norman Kauff.

Well, to get back to the story, Manalapan decided to sue their former mayor and township attorney and hired Casagrande (Menna’s new partner) and McCarthy at about $130 per hour.

Here’s where the story gets good.

Around this time, an anonymous blogger calling himself “daTruthSquad” suddenly appeared. daTruthSquad was both highly knowledgeable and highly critical of the town’s lawsuit. Casagrande and McCarthy insisted Moskovitz must be the anonymous blogger but he denied it. So, they did what any fine attorney billing the taxpayer an hourly rate would do – they subpoenaed Google, demanding the Internet behemoth unmask the blogger.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation leapt to daTruthSquad’s defense and the presiding judge quashed the subpoena.

And the case continues for around $130 per hour per attorney plus expenses, all for the good of Manalapan. Or is it for the benefit of you-know-who?

Now, my dear reader, it’s time for bed. But you best remember to be on good behavior or I’ll be calling Norman Kauff.

>>> Read more!