Why it's better to be corrupt than stupidSunday, February 27, 2005
BY JOHN FARMER JR. You are a public official (or someone who is running for public office); I am someone who wants to work and be paid with public money. I give you something of value in some form. I pave your driveway, for instance, or contribute to your campaign, or -- if you're really stupid, and I'm really working for the FBI -- I hand you an envelope filled with cash. You in turn help me to get the work I want. Question: Should either of us expect to be awakened at 6 a.m. by law enforcement, dragged before the assembled cameras in handcuffs and leg irons (the media somehow always seem to know about these "top secret" operations), and forced to do the alderman's shuffle into magistrate's court? The answer, stated simply, is: It all depends. Sometimes you go to jail (if I'm working for the FBI), sometimes I go to jail (if you're working for the FBI), sometimes we both go to jail (if the FBI has a camera mounted, say, in your office), and -- here's the catch -- sometimes nothing happens because we've done nothing illegal. Sometimes we both get promoted. You get elected; I get the job. That's right. The scenarios described above are classic "pay to play." They define our political culture. But the line between legality and illegality can be a hazy one, because the distinction exists at a moral vanishing point. Take, for instance, last week's arrests in Monmouth County of 11 public officials -- including the mayors of Hazlet, Keyport and West Long Branch -- for accepting cash payments (and, in one instance, a free paving job) from a "demolition contractor" (who says the feds lack a sense of irony?) in exchange for their assistance in getting public work for the contractor. No one has been convicted yet, except in the court of public opinion. But if the facts as alleged in the complaints filed in federal court are proven -- particularly if the defendants said on tape what they are alleged to have said -- the cash was clearly a payment made with the intent to influence the awarding of public contracts, was clearly understood to have that purpose, and the defendants acted in furtherance of the payment. (In other words, if they did it, they'll be doing time.) This is silly, Keystone Crooks stuff, remarkable mainly for the trivial amounts paid to the public officials, for the number of officials willing to accept such token payments, and for the "dumb and dumber-er" comments that several are alleged to have made in accepting the money. U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, in announcing the arrests, was understandably incredulous. After all, he pointed out, his office has prosecuted 76 public officials in the past three years, at virtually every level of municipal and county government. He didn't mention, but could have, the state's recent prosecutions of a state legislator and the chief of staff to the state's Commerce and Economic Growth Commission. How, he wondered aloud, could conduct like this still be going on, in the wake of such high-profile prosecutions? There are two possible answers to the question. First, corrupt dealing may be like drug dealing; there is so much bribery going on at any one time that the people involved develop a false sense that someone else, not they, will be caught. More likely, though, the problem persists because our political culture is a culture of corruption. Let's change the facts slightly in Monmouth County. Suppose, for instance, that you are a paving contractor who doesn't work for the FBI, and you want to be given municipal work in Monmouth County. Let's also suppose that you're a sophisticated businessman who understands that a direct cash payment in an envelope would be a crime. Any public official who's not an idiot, you think (because you don't know any better), would throw you out of his office for even broaching the subject. You are also savvy enough to know that without some "involvement in the process," you stand little chance as a municipal contractor. What do you do? You do a little research, get to know the area. You find out who the "players" are at the county and municipal level, hire the "right" lawyer or engineering or accounting firm, and find out where the money has to be directed in a given town or county. Or you make a point of knowing whose cousin twice removed may need employment at your brother-in-law's bricklaying company -- or which subcontractors or union locals seem to appear all the time on projects. No one says anything about demolition work. No one has to. Then you follow through. You give to the county or local organization or other designated entity, like a political action committee, or make good on whatever extraneous acts of good will may be necessary. Any connection to the specific work itself is nonexistent. Things begin to happen. A mayor's sister becomes a judge. The county or state organization, a local legislator, a freeholder candidate receives a political contribution. You exercise your first amendment right to free speech by hosting a fund-raiser, or even 10 fund-raisers. Pretty soon, you're blowing stuff up with our property tax dollars. The point is this: Your intent may be identical to the supposed intent of the FBI's demolition guy, but you can influence the decision- making process to the same extent without committing a crime. You can do this because "pay to play" in most of its forms is not only legal but an imperative of our political process. No one today ever has to say the magic words that land you in front of the cameras. The penetration of corruption into our political culture is that complete. The people who do say the magic words are the low-hanging fruit in this jungle. But should stupidity really be the difference-maker here? Whatever the current legal niceties, surely the difference between a hand-to-hand, "here's your cut of the demolition deal" payoff and the more circuitous, unstated conferring of a benefit is morally negligible. As long as legal "pay-to-play" measures can produce the same results as the payment of bribes, we are, in effect, prosecuting officials not for being corrupt but for being stupid. What is needed is a transformation of the political culture, and, unfortunately, there are limits to what the United States Attorney, the state Attorney General's Office, the State Commission of Investigation or the Inspector General can accomplish in this vein. In the absence of more general cultural reform, at some point -- like the U.S. Attorney, I am amazed we haven't reached it yet -- prosecution will have winnowed out New Jersey's political Darwin Award winners, and we'll be left with the creatures who have evolved, the ones with the opposable attorneys and binocular accountants. We'll be left with the really smart ones playing essentially the same game. No one will be caught, because there will be no one left to catch. But the results will still be skewed by money and influence, and corruption will remain our taxpayers' hidden assessment. John Farmer Jr., a former attor ney general of New Jersey, is a regular contributor to Perspective.
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