Mayor Dawn Zimmer announced a joint ethics and campaign finance reform package at Hoboken City Hall this afternoon. Councilman-At-Large Ravi Bhalla, right, worked with the mayor to draft the measures.Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer
laid out the initiatives of a new ethics and campaign finance reform package at a press conference Thursday afternoon in City Hall, just hours after signing them into law through an executive order.
Councilman-At-Large
Ravi Bhalla
stood beside Zimmer and has been involved with the mayor in drafting the measures.
The package will appear before the City Council next Wednesday and Zimmer called on council members to codify the initiatives by passing ordinances.
Campaign Finance Reform
The mayor's first initiative ramps up
anti-wheeling laws
and attempts to curb donations from Political Action Committees (PACs) outside the Hoboken city limits and "close loopholes" within the city's current pay-to-play ordinance.
The new measure will limit donations from both PACs and local political party organizations to $500 per campaign, per election. Self-funded candidate committees - defined as groups that take 75 percent or more of its funds from one individual - will also be limited to $500 donations.
Hoboken-based political committees that are not considered self-funded will still be allowed to spend up to $8,200 on a single campaign and individual donations will remain capped at $2,600.
Individuals who donate at the cap and through self-funded candidate committees will now be limited to campaign donations of up to $3,100.
"We want to see where there are loopholes in the law so that the citizens of Hoboken know who is funding campaigns," Bhalla said.
Another concern is the role of developers in funding Hoboken elections.
"I have been personally threatened by developers," Zimmer said this afternoon.
While she would not say where the threats came from, the mayor said that developers had told her they would "come into Hoboken's races" should she fail to accept their offers.
"We need this anti-wheeling legislation," she said.
Hoboken campaign trails - much like their national counterparts - are characteristically fraught with accusations of pay-to-play violations and ballot fraud. (Take last November's
between
Tim Occhipinti
and incumbent
Michael Lenz
during and after the
fourth ward special elections
or the
between council members
Ravi Bhalla
and
Beth Mason
last May.)
Zimmer's package comes at a moment when candidates are actively putting out bids for the City Council elections in May.
Throughout the press conference, the mayor made reference to her predecessor, former mayor Peter Cammarano who was arrested by the FBI just weeks into is term and plead guilty to extortion last spring.
When questioned about the timing of her announcement, Zimmer said: "Do we want another Peter Cammarano kind of election? I don't think so... We need fair, transparent elections as soon as possible."
Ethics Reform
City Hall employees filed into a meeting with the mayor this morning where she announced her plans to "provide an ethical work environment" and "reduce the city's liabilities."
"People seemed nervous, like what is she going to say," said Zimmer who noted that this was the first meeting of its kind between the mayor and city employees. The response, she said, was generally positive.
The ethics package places bans on nepotism in city government, political fundraising on public property and all workplace violence and harassment. City employees will also be required to attend anti-sexual harassment and ethics training sessions each year.
The next step, the mayor said, will be presenting the ethics reforms to the police and fire departments.
The package also includes a mandate to establish an honor code system for collecting the city's $25 recreation fee which failed to pass at a previous City Council meeting. The fee will be waived on a no-questions-asked basis for any family that says it cannot pay.