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Who has inside track for Hamilton project?

Sunday, August 22, 2004

By DARRYL R. ISHERWOOD

Staff Writer

HAMILTON - When American Standard closed down its toilet factory here, a bold plan to redevelop the old industrial site took shape. In broad brush strokes, developers were to create a 450,000-square-foot office park and as many as 700 condominiums and town houses.

Officials hoped to pair the development of the former toilet factory with an overhaul of an NJ Transit station, creating a transit village with an additional 300 housing units and several retail stores on the station site.

The plan began to take shape last spring when Conshohocken, Pa.-based Preferred Real Estate Investments began work on the office park.

Transit villages are viewed by state planners as a way to stem suburban sprawl by locating attractive housing options around transit hubs. Another such development is being studied for Princeton Junction.

But in Hamilton, the highly controversial plan has sparked protests from residents who fear disruption of their quiet neighborhoods and a school system overburdened with more children, sparking higher taxes.

Some residents also have alleged the township administration is backing the project to please developers.

And though no plans for the housing portion have yet been filed, a developer with a hefty budget for Democratic Party campaign contributions may already have established a welcome mat in Hamilton. -- -- -- Public records show that corporate entities associated with Jack Morris, a principal of the Columbia Group of West Windsor, the company selected by American Standard to build the housing portion on its factory site, have contributed more than $600,000 to statewide Democratic Party activities over the past seven years.

And through a process known as "wheeling," which is legal, a portion of that money may have been funneled through various Democratic organizations to Hamilton Mayor Glen Gilmore's last re-election campaign.

Columbia has been involved with the Hamilton project from the start. The president of the Columbia Group, Steven Goldin, who was Gov. James E. McGreevey's director of planning when McGreevey was mayor of Woodbridge, sat in on at least one meeting of the group that laid the initial groundwork for the redevelopment plan. Goldin was attending meetings to decide the future of the property as early as March 2003.

A township official said they solicited Goldin's advice because of his familiarity with transit village designs. The public, however, was not invited to comment on or review the plans until January this year, and shortly thereafter American Standard disclosed that Goldin's Columbia Group had been picked for the housing construction.

Morris, a resident of Middlesex County, is politically well-connected and has been involved in several high-profile land deals throughout the state, including the new Garden State Park in Camden County and the transit village at the Matawan-Aberdeen NJ Transit Station.

His donations have found their way to several Democratic candidates throughout the state.

A spokesman for Gilmore said Morris' money, if it has found its way to the mayor's campaign war chest, has not influenced any decisions regarding who develops the transit village.

Morris declined to be interviewed about his campaign contributions or about the transit village project for this story.

Goldin, Columbia's president, also was unwilling to comment about Morris' involvement in the project. He also declined to confirm that Morris, who has been quiet about his connection to the transit village plan, was a principal of his company. -- -- --

But documents obtained by The Times show that Morris is heavily involved with Columbia. A Certificate of Formation for the company obtained from the state Division of Revenue shows Morris is the registered agent for the company.

According to a local attorney familiar with corporate formations, the agent of a company is someone empowered to act and receive mail and information on the company's behalf. The formation paperwork also gave the Piscataway address used for Morris' other corporate entities.

In addition, Morris' wife, Sheryl Weingarten, signed the corporate paperwork on behalf of Columbia.

Also, Morris' signature on behalf of Columbia appears on a development plan for the Matawan-Aberdeen transit village obtained from the township of Aberdeen.

Finally, state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) records show the Columbia Group listed at Morris' Piscataway business address.

While Morris' connection to Columbia is indisputable, the path taken by his political contributions is more difficult to follow, thanks to the practice of wheeling.

According to reports filed with ELEC, Morris has been a heavy contributor to the New Jersey Democratic Committee as well as to several counties' Democratic committees.

While records show no direct contributions from Morris to any Hamilton officials, there are several donations from the developer and his companies to various statewide Democratic committees, which in turn donated to the Mercer County Democratic Committee - Mayor Glen Gilmore's most generous contributor during his re-election bid last November.

Of a total of more than $400,000 in donations made to the incumbent mayor, some $81,000 came from the Mercer County Democratic Committee.-- -- -- Wheeling, through its resemblance to a shell game, helps to conceal the identity of contributors. While not illegal, it is often cited by opponents of the "pay-to-play" system of making political contributions and getting hefty contracts in return as a way to circumvent election contribution laws.

"Wheeling is a fundamental part of the culture of corruption in New Jersey," said Assemblyman Bill Baroni, R-Hamilton. "It's one of the reasons I've been fighting so hard since my first days in office to ban this type of pay-to-play. When you see $25,000 moving from one political campaign to another within days of each other, you realize something is up. It's wrong, and we should ban it at all levels of government."

In June 2003, during the early stages of Gilmore's re-election campaign, the Bergen County Democratic Party received a check for $30,000. That check came from Smith Street Properties, which lists Morris' wife Sheryl as the sole member of its board of directors and its agent and gives the same address of record as Morris' development company, Edgewood Properties of Piscataway. Six days later, $25,000 was sent from Bergen County to the Mercer Democratic Party.

Four months later, on Oct. 8, 2003, the Mercer County Democratic Committee sent $50,000 to Gilmore's campaign war chest. And three weeks after that, on Oct. 30, the Columbia Group sent $25,000 to the Mercer County Democratic Committee.

Also, on Oct. 30, five days before the mayoral election that Gilmore won, S&J Laundries, another company that lists Morris' wife as its lone board member and agent and also gives the same Piscataway address of record, donated $37,000 to the Camden County Democratic Committee, which sent $25,000 to the Mercer Democrats one day earlier.

While there is no absolute proof the money that ended up in Gilmore's campaign came from Morris, the Columbia Group or the Bergen County or Camden County Democrats, clean government advocates see little good in the practice of wheeling.

"Generally speaking, wheeling is a way to hide contributions from public scrutiny, and it's used in an effort to evade contribution limits," said Heather Taylor, a spokeswoman for clean government advocacy group Common Cause.

-- -- --

Her group has supported bans on wheeling in the Senate and Assembly, but Taylor said the legislation enacted only bans wheeling from January to July each year.

Rich Ochab, a spokesman for Morris' Edgewood Properties company, defended the contributions his company has made.

All donations made by the company are done to express First Amendment rights and support the communities in which the company does business, he said in a statement. The statement did not respond to a reporter's question as to whether pay-to-play practices were at work.

Rich McClellan, Mercer County Democratic chairman and chief of staff to Gilmore, denied any of the contributions had anything to do with the Hamilton mayor or with an attempt to influence land-use decisions in Hamilton.

"I am not aware of any connection between the donations," McClellan said. "All I know is that we have done everything according to the law of New Jersey, and that is how we will continue to proceed."

According to McClellan, Gilmore flatly denies that campaign donations played any part in The Columbia Group being chosen by American Standard to develop the site.

A spokesman for American Standard also denied the donations had anything to do with the company's choice of developers, saying Columbia Group is a well-known residential developer that would do a good job with the site.

According to a spokesman for the Camden County Democratic Committee, last-minute donations between county parties are common. The $25,000 donation from Camden to Mercer was sent on Oct. 29, the spokesman said, and was received by Mercer County on Oct. 30.

"Camden County Democrats are team players. We regularly provide support to Democratic candidates and organizations, especially when they are engaged in competitive elections," said spokesman Richard McGrath in an e-mailed statement. "There couldn't be a connection (between the donations) because we contributed to Mercer before we received the contribution from S&J Laundries." -- -- -- Morris and Goldin are big fish in New Jersey politics.

Both developers, along with Gilmore, who is chairman of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities' Economic Development Committee, sit on the governor's New Jersey Development Council, a group that includes 28 high-profile developers.

According to The Star-Ledger of Newark, members of this group have donated at least $3.25 million to McGreevey and other state Democrats in the past four years, including $408,000 from Morris.

By comparison, the same group has donated about $780,000 to state Republicans over the same period, including a total of $64,660 from Morris.

The group has met with the governor and his advisers at least six times since 2002, the Star-Ledger reported, to advise him on several key issues for state development.

According to the Star-Ledger, in 2000 McGreevey considered Morris for chairman of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, a highly coveted, unpaid position.

The possibility of pay-to-play also reared its head in the Aberdeen-Matawan transit village concept, which has yet to come to pass. A campaign donation to state Republicans was received during the same time period that Columbia was chosen by Republican-controlled Matawan to develop its portion of the site.

Aberdeen chose a different developer who officials said presented a plan that more closely fit their idea for the station. The project remains in litigation.

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