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Gov. Murphy Quietly Signs Law Creating Statewide “Parks Foundation”

Law Provides An Institution To Solicit Dark Money And Inject Private Influence Over The Management Of State Parks

Corrupt Pay-To-Play Now Infects All NJ State Parks

AstroTurf – falsely made to appear grassroots

an astroturf campaign/group

When successful, Astroturf efforts resemble actual community mobilization efforts. They create the impression that local people are engaged in the effort and doing the things that traditional community organizations do.

NJ media have properly exposed, editorialized, and condemned the scheme by billionaire Paul Fireman to create a sham astroturf “Foundation” to develop and commercialize Liberty State Park.

Fireman created and funded a sham “Foundation” and used that Foundation as the vehicle to dupe the public and inject his private financial interests into Legislative and DEP policy decisions concerning the management of Liberty State Park.

The Fireman “Foundation” was a classic dark money pay-to-play scheme.

As a result of the media coverage, that scheme is now common public knowledge and the media exposure has effectively shamed and derailed Fireman’s project, at least for now and until the heat dies down.

This is exactly what good journalism can and should do: protect the public interest and expose the self-serving schemes of private special interests.

So, given how rightly appalled the media was about Fireman’s sham Liberty State Park “Foundation” and how this “Foundation” was so transparently an astro-turf vehicle to solicit dark money, dupe the public, and inject private influence over the management of State Parks, how is it possible that that same media has totally ignored legislation recently signed into law by Governor Murphy that is based on the Fireman’s Foundation model (and it expressly targets and includes Liberty State Park)? See:

• NJ Gov. Murphy Just Corporatized State Parks And Forests – Liberty State Park Targeted By Lame Duck Stealth Amendments

The new “State Parks Foundation” Gov. Murphy just created (with help from Democrats in the Legislature) is a blatant pay-to-play scheme (no pun intend).

The Foundation membership is composed of private interests.

The Foundation is given powers to solicit unlimited private funding, to design parks projects, and to dedicate funding to those projects it designed and raised funds for.

NJ State Parks have a $720 million unfunded maintenance backlog, so DEP’s desperation for money will mean that anything the Foundation wants it will get approved by DEP.

The Foundation is not subject to NJ Open Public Meetings Act, so the public can be shut out of Foundation deliberations and planning and Parks funding decisions.

The Foundation is not subject to NJ’s Open Public Records Act, so the public will not have access to documents, funding sources, park plans, and meeting deliberations and decisions.

The Foundation is not subject to NJ’s ethics laws so there will be gross conflicts of interest, a virtual invitation for pay to play schemes.

The Foundation is not subject to NJ’s campaign finance and disclosure laws, another invitation for the corrupt influence of dark money.

Yet the NJ media has not written one story about this law! (to my knowledge).

How can this be?

How can this kind of corruption go unreported?