Monroe Township Mayoral candidate, Ken Chiarella and Council Candidates Chirag Bhagat and Stanley Edelman believe that their opponents have created a trust and credibility crises by accepting campaign donations from developers and professional services that do business in Monroe Township.

The onerous tax increases are caused by those relationships, and it is putting a severe burden on the taxpayers, on the school district and on the services of Monroe Township.

They hereby make a pledge to not accept any campaign contributions from Political Action Committees, developers or professional services doing business in Monroe Township, or who may do business with Monroe in the future.

Chiarella, Bhagat and Edelman call on all Monroe Township candidates, for Mayor and Town Council, to join them in restoring the public trust by running campaigns devoid of this type of funding, which they believe is a major conflict of interest and a breach of the public trust. Monroe residents need to know that their elected officials will place their interests before any other, and that they will be fully transparent.

Mayor Richard Pucci apparently doesn’t believe that there is anything wrong with accepting donations from professional services that do business in Monroe Township.  In fact, Pucci is placing blame on the Supreme Court of New Jersey for allowing it.  That’s sort of like a teenager blaming his parents after stealing from his father’s wallet because his father didn’t lock his wallet in a safe.

Pucci’s heir apparent will continue his policies if he is reelected. Why wouldn’t he?  He hasn’t stopped these practices in the past 14 years that he has been Council President and has been more than happy to accept the donations for his own Council campaigns.   If Ken Chiarella is elected Mayor the practice will end!  Vote Chiarella for Mayor and Chirag Bhagat and Stanley Edelman for Monroe Township Council.

Here is a quote from the article and link to the article: PAC Donations in Monroe Township

“In Monroe Township, Mayor Richard Pucci and his running mates received at least $13,000 in donations from three different PACS during the last election cycle.  All three PACS received donations from Monroe Township professional services contractors, including $4,800 from Hodulik and Morrison, which holds the township’s accounting contract and $3,600 from Epic Construction Management, which holds a contract for management of the expansion of the township community center.

In addition, the Monroe Township Democratic Committee, which Pucci chairs, received more than $20,000 in the past year from the same three PACs.  The committee in turn donated $20,000 to the candidates on Oct. 21.

Pucci, who when he signed the township’s pay to play reforms in 2007 called them “a model for others in the nation and state to follow” said the intent of the ordinance was to limit direct donations to candidates and had nothing to do with PACs.

“I’m the mayor and the chairman or the Monroe Democratic Party,” Pucci said. “We have always followed the law. That’s been our policy all along. We haven’t done anything illegal. That’s our policy.”

Pucci blamed the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision for sending campaign finance off the rails.”

As much as our current administration protests being labeled as being beholden to the developers the facts tell another story.  Richard Pucci, Gerald Tamburro and Leslie Koppel are awash in developer cash.  The political donations from developers in Monroe Township are helping keep the current team in office for sure.  

How does this scheme work?  Well, developers give money to the Pucci, Tamburro and Koppel via campaign donations.  Is it illegal?  No.  Is it unethical?  You be the judge.

I will provide a small sample here and then you can decide.  Over the next couple of weeks we will highlight more developer connections.  We will also show you how our professional services in Monroe work to keep the current team in power.  We will list employees of those services who also are township employees and who also work very hard on the political campaigns for the aforementioned.

Donor Facts Right from our NJ State ELEC database These are only the direct donations and not the donations funneled through PACS We will do the deep dive on those for you shortly also:

Below are some of the PAC donations from 2011 with a link to an interesting article on how the PAC donations work and are filled with donations from developers and professional services that do business with Monroe Township. T&M Associates is an engineering firm located in Red Bank. Here is an interesting article about them. http://www.redbankgreen.com/2011/04/tm-tops-contractor-donor-list.html.

Ken Chiarella, Chirag Bhagat and Stanley Edelman want to wish everyone a very happy Independence Day!  We need to recapture that spirit of independence that drove our Founding Fathers to fight for their liberty.  If the Founding Fathers were willing to trade peace and security for liberty and freedom, we would still be a bunch of colonies of Great Britain.  Be proud to be American, be proud of our flag and never shirk the responsibilities that come with maintaining your liberty and freedom and your right to pursue happiness.  Now go clean your barbeques and start cooking!