Sunday, March 1, 2009

Pay-To-Play, Quid-Pro-Quo, And A Lot Of Things The Taxpayers Should Know

In keeping with the theme of my post about Robert Mericle and Company donations Allentown Call writers Darryl Isherwood and Jarrett Renshaw wrote two great articles in Sunday's Morning Call.

Darryl's article is title In Lehigh Valley, contracts and campaign donations are linked. Mr. Renshaw writes Allentown's Pawlowski says there's no quid pro quo.

Highlighting Renshaw's article first one reads the following about Allentown's Mayor Pawloski: In a recent two-hour interview at his home, the mayor defended the contributions, saying he doesn't single-handedly award city contracts. Rather, he seeks the city solicitor's and others' advice. As for development projects and grants, they go through layers of approvals, he said.

Pawlowski also noted that only a fraction of city vendors and developers who do business with the city also contribute to his campaign.

A graduate of the Moody Bible Institute and former head of a campus ministry, Pawlowski said his strong religious beliefs help him avoid ethical pitfalls and influence his decision-making as the city's chief executive.

''My integrity is really important to me,'' he added. '' I have done everything I could to separate myself from these problems.


Mayor Ed, let me help you out with your posture. Here is the next paragraph.
The mayor says he builds his possible donor list by collecting the business cards of city vendors, by tapping friends and acquaintances and lifting the names of contributors who appear on area politicians' campaign reports -- on both sides of the political aisle.

Help me out here. How can he state that he has done everything he can to separate himself from these problems when he is collecting the business vendor cards for donations?

Renshaw goes on to write The Philadelphia law firm Cozen O'Connor doesn't have such a history with Allentown. Pawlowski selected the firm to negotiate a union contract with the city's police department in January of 2008. Nine months later, the firm's political action committee made a $2,500 contribution to Pawlowski's campaign.

In 2008, the city paid the firm $140,417.

Pawlowski said he solicited campaign money from the firm after it was hired by the city, saying ''I got their business card and I added their names to my mailing list.''


Isherwood writes about Lehigh County Executive Donald Cunnigham.

About a dozen county contractors have donated more than $100,000 combined to Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham's campaign war chest while receiving ''no-bid'' contracts worth more than $3 million, a Morning Call analysis of county and campaign finance records shows.

One of those contracts went to Computer Aid Inc., of Allentown, whose president has donated a total of $17,000 to Cunningham's campaign fund in the past four years.

In that time, Computer Aid Inc. has been paid more than $1.5 million under a contract to manage the county's information technology department.


As I previously wrote Robert Mericle and his associated business interests donated over $500,000 alone since 1998 to various political campaigns.

The Allentown articles touch on the topics of qui-pro-quo and pay-to-play. Harrisburg better get its act together.

Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, said pay-to-play legislation is integral to assuring the public its tax dollars are being spent wisely by the politicians entrusted with the purse strings. As long as donations and contracts are tied, he said, an appearance of corruption remains.

There is a saying- "The appearance of an impropriety is worse than the impropriety itself." Issues like these further erode the public's confidence in government. What was once an acceptable behavior is now meeting a new, more forceful effort to eradicate the problem. As more information becomes public sweetheart deals will no longer remain private.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Robert Mericle anybody tied to him is up the creek