VAN DREW/ALBANO CAMPAIGN MAIL DIRECTING PHONE CALLS TO TAXPAYER-FUNDED LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT OFFICE REQUIRES INVESTIGATION BY N.J

(VINELAND, October 12) – First District Senator Nick Asselta and his Assembly running mates Norris Clark and Michael Donohue today echoed Assembly Republican Leader Alex DeCroce’s request for a full investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General into potential violations of New Jersey law and the privacy rights of First District constituents who responded to a campaign mail piece sent out by the Democratic State Committee on behalf of Assemblymen Jeff Van Drew and Nelson Albano.

“Using taxpayer funded resources for personal use – including political gain – is against the law, and Jeff Van Drew and Nelson Albano know it,” said Asselta. “So is sharing personal information gathered in a legislative district office. Yet they allowed the Democratic State Committee to send out a piece of campaign mail directing recipients to ‘Please call our office at (609) 465-0700.’ That phone number is not the phone number of their campaign office, it’s the phone number of their legislative district office – and that means that anyone who called that number and gave any kind of personal information at all, whether it was a name, an address, a Social Security number, or a phone number for a call-back, had a right to expect that their privacy would be protected. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was happening to that information – it was being recorded for campaign purposes, so the campaign later would be able to better target its communications directly to those constituents who responded by phone to their legislative office. That’s just plain wrong.”

“State law is crystal clear on this,” said Donohue, who serves as a municipal attorney. “Communications from constituents to a legislator are entitled to a heightened expectation of privacy. For instance, at the time OPRA was enacted, the Legislature found and declared it to be the public policy of the State that the Legislature ‘has a responsibility and an obligation to safeguard from public access a citizen's personal information with which it has been entrusted when disclosure thereof would violate the citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy.’ In furtherance of that public policy the Legislature specifically exempted communications such as those received by Assemblymen Van Drew and Albano from OPRA. See, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1.1. The Open Public Records Act specifically provides that: ‘Government Record’ shall not include ‘information received by a member of the Legislature from a constituent or information held by a member of the Legislature concerning a constituent, including but not limited to information in written form or contained in any e-mail or computer data base, or in any telephone record whatsoever’ – note, ‘in any telephone record whatsoever.’”

“A week ago, Nelson Albano and Matt Milam said they had no control whatsoever over the mail being sent out on their behalf by the Democratic State Committee,” added Clark. “Today, Jeff Van Drew is defending that mail by claiming that there’s nothing wrong with using campaign funds to send out a mail piece directing people to call his taxpayer-funded legislative district office and share personal information. If even one person’s information was then turned over to the campaign – and what reasonable person doubts that this is exactly what occurred? – then Van Drew and Albano are in violation of the law. These shenanigans are exactly the kind of thing that corrupt the democratic process and turn people off to public service. It’s got to stop, and it’s got to stop now.”

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