If New Jersey is the most corrupt, it has close competition

When I was growing up in New Jersey, most people read the New York papers and watched New York television stations, so they didn’t know much about the state’s governor or its mayors or congressmen, except for one notorious public servant, Mayor Frank “I am the law†Hague of Jersey City.

Mayor Hague used his day job as his base for running Hudson County and the state’s powerful Democratic machine. He never earned more than $8,000 a year, but he was able to save enough to maintain a luxurious home on the Jersey shore, keep a suite at the Plaza in New York and leave an estate of $10 million. He also avoided jail.

The mayor’s receptacle for walking-around-money was his specially designed City Hall desk with a drawer facing the visitor. At the appropriate point in a meeting, the drawer could be pushed out toward Hague’s caller, allowing the guest to conveniently deposit an envelope containing a gratuity, thereby avoiding the vulgar practice of handing his honor a bribe.

Nothing much has changed since then in New Jersey, nearly everybody’s choice as the most corrupt state in the Union. The state is no longer dominated by a single boss as powerful as Hague, but it remains dominated by news media located in New York and Pennsylvania and populated by citizens who know more about what’s happening in Queens than in Trenton.

The state has been in the news most recently for the same old Jersey story, the arrest of 44 people in what was billed by The New York Times as “the state’s biggest corruption scandal in years — but not, to be sure, that many years.†The arrests included the usual suspects — mayors, legislators, contractors — but also some new wrinkles, in the form of money laundering rabbis and an importer of Israeli kidneys, who allegedly purchased kidneys for $10,000 and sold them at a 1,600-percent profit.

The arrests came, not as the result of crusading newspaper exposes, but from information gathered by an FBI informant wearing a wire. The newspaper coverage has been lengthy but after the fact, as were the broadcast accounts. And now, with newspapers facing a most painful transition from print to the Internet, we can only fear investigative reporting on public sector wrongdoing will become even more meager, and not only in New Jersey.

There are, of course, reasons for New Jersey’s fondness for civic corruption beyond a lack of investigative journalism. It has been pointed out that the state is blessed with 566 municipalities, which makes Connecticut’s insistence on having 169 towns and cities seem forward-looking.

Unlike Connecticut, which eliminated its corruption-prone, but otherwise useless, county governments during the Ribicoff administration half a century ago, New Jersey has all kinds of governing boards on local, county and state levels offering opportunities to determine who gets permits or contracts for publicly funded projects.

In the past decade alone, 150 of New Jersey’s legislators, mayors, county executives, councilmen and members of local boards have been arrested and charged with crimes involving what is the basic form of civic corruption, pay for play. Contractors and other vendors are the givers and local officials are the receivers.

In fairness to New Jersey, it should be noted the primitive practice of pay to play is not unknown in Connecticut and the past two decades have been rich in corruption convictions that included one governor, three mayors and counting, and numerous other state and city officials.

To name just a few, there was the Rowland administration crowd, most notably, in addition to the governor, Treasurer Paul Silvester, who took bribes and kickbacks in exchange for state pension fund business, and deputy chief of staff Lawrence Alibozek, who admitted taking bribes and burying the loot in his yard. Then we had state Sen. Ernest Newton, jailed for five years for taking a $5,000 bribe, and Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim, still in jail for corruption on a considerably larger scale.

Also, we have the not-to-be-forgotten Waterbury mayoral trio: Mayor Edward Bergin, acquitted for taking a bribe from a towing contractor; his successor, “reform†Mayor Joseph Santopietro, jailed with six others for taking bribes and kickbacks from bankers and developers; and Mayor Philip Giordano, jailed for abusing two little girls after a wiretap seeking corruption evidence revealed the sex crimes. The fact that he’s now serving a 37-year sentence on the sexual abuse counts has allowed the mayor to avoid prosecution so far on corruption charges.

Still to be determined is the fate of Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, indicted in a classic pay-for-play caper that Mayor Hague might have envied. He will be tried in September for allegedly exchanging $40,000 in kitchen and bathroom renovations in his home for a $5 million paving contract.

If New Jersey is, as it appears to be, really the most corrupt state, it is not without competition. All we need is somebody selling imported kidneys.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.