Municipal Council approved Redevelopment Pay-to-Play Reform Jersey City, NJ - At its September 9th meeting, the Jersey City Municipal Council voted 8-0-1 to enact Civic JC\'s proposed Redevelopment Pay-to-Play Reform Ordinance. This ordinance was a long time in coming and represents a critical step forward in bringing ethics reform to Jersey City.
Under New Jersey law, local officials have the authority to exercise eminent domain, irrevocably change zoning and land use, and award tax abatements and other financial benefits to developers performing redevelopment work. With this much power, conflicts of interest and the appearance of a conflicts of interest must be eliminated for the public to have confidence that redevelopment decisions made by Jersey City government are based on merit, not campaign contributions.
The approved Redevelopment Pay-to-Play Reform ordinance now bans contributions to local candidates, elected officials and municipal and county political parties by developers and their professionals who wish to do redevelopment work in Jersey City.
Aaron Morrill, founding director said: \\\"this zero tolerance is necessary to prevent even the appearance of improper influence on city officials in their decisions regarding re-development. While the ordinance is not perfect, it will go a long way towards restoring confidence in the re-development process.”
We thank and commend the Municipal Council for approving this necessary and sound ordinance that will improve the redevelopment process in Jersey City; Councilman Steven Fulop for re-introducing the ordinance, Councilman William Gaughan for joining us in meetings with the Law Department and supporting the dialogue, Councilman Michael Sottolano for addressing concerns and forging consensus and Corporation Counsel, William Matsikoudis and his staff for bringing the council and reform interests together to move the process forward.
Civic JC also thanks our partners in local reform, Citizen\\\'s Campaign (http://jointhecampaign.com), NJ Appleseed (http://njappleseed.net) and Hoboken\\\'s People for Open Government (http://hobokenpog.org) for their support and resources.
Valerio Luccio, president of Civic JC said: Civic JC is now looking forward to working with our council and the Law Department on additional reform initiatives including applying the state\'s strict Conflict of Interest law locally (http://www.state.nj.us/ethics/statues/conflicts) and working towards implementing a Clean Elections program / publicly financed elections in Jersey City\\\".Read More
State Ethics Commission | New Jersey Conflicts of Interest Law
Source: www.state.nj.us
new jersey state ethics commission, statutes, regulations, statutes regulations, conflicts of interest law
