Statement to the League of Women Voters

To the members of The League and to the guests who have gathered for tonight's freeholder debate, we are sorry to disappoint you. Please accept our apologies for not being here, but there is an important meeting tonight in Rutherford on the controversial EnCap development that we believe we must attend. The EnCap project is of vital concern to the many residents of Rutherford, Lyndhurst and North Arlington. This project has gone from one that promised recreation to thousands of Bergen County residents, to one that will burden communities with thousands of units of unwanted low and moderate income housing.Encap is emblematic of the runaway development that is jolting New Jersey and Bergen County. The project is fraught with political insider dealings in which Freeholder and Rutherford Mayor Bernadette McPherson and her party have been intimately involved. We feel it is extremely important to be in Rutherford tonight to listen to the people and their concerns.

We would like to take opportunity to debate freeholders Ganz and McPherson at a later date and with a panel of reporters knowledgeable of Bergen County issues and under rules that allow for meaningful give and take.

We are running for Freeholder to end the Democrat Party corruption that has forced county spending and borrowing to skyrocket since 2000. In the past five years, county taxes have increased by $64 million dollars and borrowing has exceeded $700 million dollars -- Freeholders Ganz and McPherson and their party are responsible for most of it.

They will try to tell you tonight that they actually cut spending by $28 million. That’s a lie. They did no such thing. Ask them to show you where spending went down in any budget they voted on.

The real county budget figures show that Ganz and McPherson raised taxes and spending every year they have been in office. In their first year, they borrowed $10.5 million just to close a budget gap.

This year the county budget increased by $26.7 million or 7 percent – to nearly $400 million. The increase was fueled by an unprecedented $8.4 million increase in salaries for county employees including $500,000 increase for political appointees in the county executive and freeholder offices.

When the budget was introduced in January the Bergen Record editorial page said that “Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney just doesn’t get it.� That’s true; he doesn’t and neither do Freeholders Ganz and McPherson.

Under Democrat control, Bergen County has become the pay to play capital of New Jersey. It is where Democrat Party donors from throughout out the state come to collect lucrative public contracts for their campaign donations

Just two weeks ago – on a single night – the Freeholders approved no-bid contracts to a group of engineers that totaled nearly $900,000 dollars. And every one of those contracts went to a donor to Democrat office holders in New Jersey. None of the donations were disclosed prior to voting on the contracts. Republican Freeholder Lisa Randall has tried for more than two years to enact a full disclosure reform to the county contracting
process and for two years Ganz and McPherson have blocked it.

The Democrat Party will never reform itself. It is taking in too much money under the current corrupt system. The less disclosure, the less public debate on how public money is spent, the better the Democrats like it.

Just two months ago, the Democrat Freeholders pushed through a plan to build a new $50 million dollar police department building over the objection of residents in Hackensack. Freeholder Ganz was asked to let the people decide through a public referendum if they wanted to spend that kind of money.

He refused.

We promise that if we are elected there will be public referendums on large projects that require bonding millions of dollars.

The Democrats will argue that no referendum was held on building the new county administration offices that you are sitting in tonight. But they won’t tell you that they wanted the county to continue to pay excessive rent for its administrative offices to a landlord who is a key campaign contributor to their party.

They also won’t tell you that the building was financed by state money, not county money.

We hope you do not fall for the Ganz McPherson deception. It is rampant. They will tell you tonight that they created a senior citizen discount drug program. That’s a lie too. They created no such program. The senior discount program was created by the Garden State Pharmacy Owners Providers Service Association and offered to every town and county in New Jersey. It is not unique to Bergen County – but again, Ganz and McPherson will not tell you the truth.

Our goal as freeholders will be to clean up the corruption that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars. We will end waste and end no bid contracts. We will take county government out of the hands of political donors and the political bosses and give it back to the people who actually live in Bergen County.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Mike Kaplan And Kelly Kirk