Palm Beach Post - Monday, September 15, 2008

Anti-’Pay-to-play’ law proposed for Lake Worth

By TONY DORIS Staff Writer

LAKE WORTH — Companies competing for city contracts would face a ban on political contributions to commissioners, under an ethics ordinance up for initial review Tuesday night.

City Commissioner Cara Jennings said she proposed the ban, based on laws in place around the country, to prevent individuals, companies or their subsidiaries from trying to skew contract votes by putting money in campaign coffers.

The Lake Worth ordinance would prohibit any business that’s under contract, or intending to be under contract with the city, from making donations to commission candidate campaigns or political action committees. Part of the city contracting procedure will be for bidders to fill out a form declaring any donations they made; to be eligible to win the contract, the bidder would have to get the contribution refunded.

Jennings said the issue arose several months ago, when Southern Waste Systems and a number of related companies contributed $1,000 to at least one commissioner’s campaign, while Southern was vying for a city contract.

West Palm Beach enacted an ethics code last year, after convictions of two city commissioners and accusations that a pay-to-play atmosphere permeated the administration of Mayor Lois Frankel.

The Lake Worth law would be one of the first of its kind in the state, said Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause Florida, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization. Wilcox, who Jennings consulted in drafting the ordinance, said that both Georgia and New Jersey have enacted similar bans, at the state legislative level.

Federal law bans contributions by corporations and unions, he said.

The commission several months ago rejected an effort by Jennings to initiate a policy of voluntary disclosure by candidates or commissioners who accepted contributions from bidders, she said. As a result, she researched and found that other cities and states had enacted contribution bans, such as the one she is now proposing.

Lake Worth’s proposed ordinance would not let commissioners merely recuse themselves from votes, if they’d taken a contribution from a bidder or related company.

“We’re trying to completely pre-empt ‘pay-to-play,’ ” Jennings said.

The proposal has the backing of at least one other member of the five-person commission, Jo-Ann Golden. “I don’t see how anyone could be against it,” Golden said.