Todd Murphy's Law

Report: Twitter in Talks with Microsoft, Google on Search Deal

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on October 8, 2009 - 9:00am.

New York - Twitter is in "advanced" talks with both Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) and Google (NASD: GOOG) to add Twitter results to their search services, All Things D reports. Compensation deals being discussed reportedly include an upfront payment of "several million dollars," "along with various revenue-sharing proposals that would give Twitter a piece of the revenue made from search results."

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tags: Microsoft | Search | Google | Publishing | Twitter |

Dennis Oury, Ex-Lawyer for Bergen Democrats Pleads Guilty in Corruption Case

Dennis Oury, a politically connected lawyer in Bergen County, pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding the borough of Bergenfield by steering contracts to a grant-writing business he owned secretly while serving as borough attorney.

He also admitted to U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler that he conspired with Joseph Ferriero, the former chairman of the Bergen County Democratic Organization, a co-defendant with whom he was scheduled to go on trial Thursday.

Oury also pleaded guilty to one count of failing to file a tax return and will be sentenced on Jan. 7.

After the guilty plea, the remaining defendant's lawyer, Joseph Hayden Jr. of Walder, Hayden & Brogan in Roseland, said the trial was still on and that he did not know whether Oury would testify.

Oury, who was counsel to the democratic organization before last year's indictment, pleaded guilty to conspiring with Ferriero to defraud Bergenfield of his honest services as borough attorney from 2001 to 2005.

In 2001, the two lawyers started a grant-writing consulting company called Governmental Grants with two public relations consultants, who were not named, acting as front men. As Bergenfield borough counsel, Oury influenced the town's decision to hire the company, keeping his interest a secret, the indictment said.

Besides getting a $6,000 retainer in 2002, Governmental Grants made a deal to get 10 percent of any grants it was able to fulfill for the town.

For $1.4 million in state grants to buy a four-acre property to expand Coopers Pond Park in the borough, Governmental Grants received a fee of $129,000 in 2004, and Oury's share was $25,000, the indictment said.

Under state law, local government officials are supposed to give the state Department of Community Affairs a list of income over $2,000 from companies in which they have an interest. Oury didn't disclose his interest in Governmental Grants, according to the charge.

And he didn't report the $25,000 as 2004 income on his federal tax return until 2008, the indictment said.

Ferriero, a former partner in Scarinci Hollenbeck in Lyndhurst, led Bergen County's Democratic Party from 1998 to 2008. That made him one of the most influential Democratic operatives in the state, and Oury worked closely with him as party counsel.

Oury also gathered a stable of public body clients, including governments and boards in Paramus, Fort Lee, Fairview, New Milford, East Newark, Garfield, Edgewater, Ridgefield, Union City and Fort Lee. He also represented the Bergen County Improvement Authority.

He served as borough attorney in Bergenfield in 2002 and again from the start of 2006 to the end of 2007.

When the defendants were indicted in September 2008, their lawyers said that Bergenfield obtained the benefits of Governmental Grant's work and there was no conflict of interest between the defendants and the town.

In a dismissal motion three months ago, Gerald Krovatin of Krovatin Klingeman in Newark argued on Oury's behalf that the statute permitting prosecutions for honest services fraud, 18 U.S.C. 1346, is in a state of legal chaos and he cited opinions from varying circuit courts of appeals to support his contention.

He said in a brief that a line of cases from the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, including U.S. v. Panarella , 277 F.3d 678 (2002), supports the proposition that prosecutions are limited when the defendant owes no fiduciary duty to the public body. And that fit Oury's case, Krovatin argued.

"As an attorney in private practice, Oury did not owe the public a duty of honest services merely by virtue of his contractual retention to provide legal services to the Borough government as Borough attorney," Krovatin argued.

Chesler didn't buy it and denied the dismissal motion on July 30.

NJ's Governor May Take Over Borough of Ridgefield if Mayor Won't Resign after Corruption Charges.

Gov. Jon Corzine says the state will consider taking control of a northern New Jersey borough whose mayor is facing corruption charges.

Read article here.

Mayor Anthony Suarez reaffirmed Sunday he would not resign despite Governor Jon Corzines threat to have the state take over the borough.

Read article here.

NJ, Where Only The Corrupt Survive?

This is a great discussion from the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, TM

This morning's news out of northern New Jersey prompted far more questions than answers in our minds. For starters, a fundamental question: what's up with New Jersey? Why, when it's developed a nearly laughable reputation as a state rife with corruption, does corruption persist? Why haven't efforts at reform worked? Do today's arrests lead anyone to think that the state is finally, finally, on the straight and narrow?

For answers, we checked in with a couple scholars who know lots about politics and ethics in the Garden State: Joseph Marbach, a dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University, and Brigid Harrison, a professor of politics and law at Montclair State.

Where did this culture of corruption start?

Marbach calls one of the most "persuasive and pervasive theories" that early immigrants to New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania viewed the role of government differently than did their contemporaries in New England or the southern colonies. "They - collections of Dutch and English settlers - tended to look at government as just another service provider," he says. In New England, the Puritan belief advocated that government should be a force for good, says Marbach, and in the south, government initially was small and its role was to protect the status quo. "But in this area, people got involved in politics because it was a career option, not necessarily because it was a higher calling. People who couldn't become doctors or lawyers became politicians."

Marbach says that such an attitude helped create a culture of corruption in two ways. For starters, because politics was a career option and not something one did at the tail end of a successful career in law or business, politicians weren't necessarily wealthy. "So a sense developed that a certain amount of graft was acceptable," says Marbach. Secondly, the role of a politician simply became to distribute goods and services - not to build a better society or to protect the status quo - adds Marbach, and such goods and services became viewed as products to trade away.

Harrison adds that early attempts to rein in local corruption in other states never really took hold in New Jersey. "You had these counties where party bosses never really relinquished their power," she says. "These modern corruption stories really have their grounding in those party machines."

Partly as a result of this reluctance to give up or consolidate power, says Marbach, New Jersey stayed incredibly fractured. Today, the state has 566 local municipalities, the second-most in the nation, behind Illinois. "We've got parkway commissions and special districts and each of these has an executive with authority and control over purse strings," he says. "That's a lot of opportunities for corruption and patronage."  Harrison calls them "mini-fiefdoms."

Have other, more contemporary forces played into the culture of corruption?

Marbach says that New Jersey sometimes gets hidden in the shadows of New York and Philadelphia. "You don't have a very strong media as watchdog," he says. Nor, he adds, is the watchdog role played by opposition parties in a lot of areas. "Some counties are one-party-dominated towns," he says. "This combination - lack of media oversight and lack of strong second party presence allows state officials in a lot of places to run amok."

Why haven't law enforcement efforts been effective in cleaning things up?

Both Marbach and Harrison say the state law-enforcement efforts have largely been ineffective because the attorney general in New Jersey is a political appointee, rather than a separately elected office, like it is in New York. "So we don't get the crusading prosecutor, we don't get the Eliot Spitzer that New York gets," says Marbach. Marbach says that when the governor doesn't make it a priority and really lean on his or her AG, the AG doesn't do the same to lower-level prosecutors. "It filters down," he says. "Those that are safeguarding the system are coming up through this system."

As a result, says Marbach, the state has largely relied on external law-enforcement forces, like the FBI and U.S. attorney's office, to crack down.

Have we finally hit a tipping point here? Will people look at this and say 'this has got to change.' In other words, can today's events and the fallout from them be used as a galvanizing force to finally clean things up?

"Absolutely not," says Harrison. She says that in New Jersey, there are two big bases of public power, the Hudson County Democrats and the Camden County Democrats. "It's like the Mafia," she says. "If you take out one family, the other family takes up more authority. Today's events are likely an indicator that Camden County Democrats will probably be able to exert stronger power."

Additionally, she thinks the same dynamic that keeps the AG from going after corruption is largely at play with the state legislature. "The legislature is rooted in corruption and it's the beneficiary of corruption. It's hard to get reform or enforcement of the law because the vampries are in charge of the blood bank."

What was your reaction when you heard news of the arrests today?

Says Harrison: "I think it's sad because as someone who teaches young people about politics and at a time in which there seems to be a good deal of optimism surrounding public service, these headlines and behaviors are only going to usher in another dose of cynicism about public officials." She adds: "I worry that the fallout from this, after a handful of officials pay the price is that people will say 'yep, they're all on the take. This is just another spoke in the wheel.'"

Says Marbach: "I guess I feel disappointment and personally I'm saddened by it. This message of corruption and not tolerating corruption just doesn't get through. It's disheartening to think that efforts to clean this up are never going to be effective."

See and Post Comments: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/23/new-jersey-where-only-the-corrupt-survive#mod=djemWEB&reflink=djemWEB&reflink=djemWLB

Bryant Gets Four Years and $25,000 Fine

A federal judge sentenced former state Sen. Wayne Bryant on Friday to 48 months in prison and a $25,000 fine for his bribery and fraud conviction, suggesting the penalty would have been stiffer but for Bryant's years of good works as a lawyer, public servant and elected official.

I don't think that will stop these guys from taking bribes - do you?

TM

QUESTIONS UNANSWERED ON BOND SCHEME

LIVINGSTON, NJ – The following letter to the editor from 27th District Assembly candidate Barry Funt was published today in the West Orange Chronicle:

One of the most searing memories of the June West Orange Town Council meeting was Mayor/Assemblyman John McKeon lacking the courage to talk to the citizens who came to ask legitimate questions about his latest scheme to squander more of our hard earned tax dollars. He quickly realized that he was not going to be able to ram through yet another taxpayer obligation, this one a $47.5MM municipal bond issue for a project that banking and real estate professionals have deemed uneconomic. Instead of engaging in an honest dialogue with his constituents, he quickly tabled the discussion for a future date and slinked out of the room without taking a single question.

That isn’t leadership. This is just more of the same inept, reckless borrowing that has bankrupted our state government. If McKeon’s judgment is better than that of every financial and real estate expert, I would think he would be proud to stand there and tell us why he is right and everyone else is wrong.

The Edison Village bond scheme should be the last straw for taxpayers. In his political career, Mayor/Assemblyman McKeon has voted for over 100 tax increases. That does not include all the debt issuances that he has supported. I am proud of the citizens who packed into that room to say “enough is enough”.

Mayor/Assemblyman McKeon is simply out of touch with the realities of how difficult it can be to earn a living in New Jersey. This November will be our first real chance to end his reign of irresponsibility and ineffectiveness. We deserve better.

Sincerely,

Barry Funt

Barry Funt is a candidate for the State Assembly in the 27th Legislative District.

Visit www.funtforassembly.org for more information about Barry Funt’s candidacy for the State Assembly.

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Paid for by Funt for Assembly, P.O. Box 713, Livingston, NJ 07039
Michael M. Silverman, Treasurer

Massive N.J. corruption sting targets mayors, legislators, rabbis

"For these defendants, corruption was a way of life," Ralph Marra, acting US Attorney said. "They existed in an ethics free zone. And they exploited giant loopholes in the state's campaign contribution rules."

Among those charged included newly elected Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, 32, and rabbi Saul Kassin, the 87-year-old spiritual leader of the close-knit Syrian Sephardic Jewish community in Deal and Brooklyn. Others were Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, 64; Anthony Suarez, 42, the mayor of Ridgefield; Leona Beldini, 74, the Jersey City deputy mayor; Assemblymen L. Harvey Smith (D-Hudson), 60 and Daniel Van Pelt (R-Ocean), 44; rabbi Edmund Nahum, 56, of Deal; and rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim, 58, of Long Branch. In all, 44 people were charged, 29 of them from New Jersey.

Read NJ.com coverage here.

Doria is gone quickly in wake of federal sweep

Joseph Doria, a former longtime Bayonne mayor who spent 27 years in the Legislature including two years as Assembly speaker resigned from his high-profile position as commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs Thursday. Gov. Jon Corzine said he asked for and got his cabinet member's resignation hours after federal investigators searched Doria's home and seized records from his Trenton office.

Read more here.

School Voucher Advocates Rally in Newark for Parental Choice

A group of educational activists called the state's urban public schools inadequate today and urged legislators to give parents more options. The rally was organized by Barry Funt a republican candidate for Assembly in the 27th District.

Read more here.

SWEEPING STATE ECONOMIC STIMULUS MEASURE CLEARS ASSEMBLY BUDGET PANEL

TRENTON -- A broad piece of legislation that Democrats are touting as economic stimulus is on the fast track with the new state budget this month.

The bill (A-4048), introduced less than a week ago and released by the Assembly's Budget Panel is  similar to the federal government's omnibus stimulus initiative from earlier this year, the state's effort seeks economic development in a number of places.

The Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit program would be overhauled to promote corporate capital investment and development near mass transit centers.

The bill also aims to spur local redevelopment by replacing the state's unwieldy and largely unused Revenue Allocation District program - only one district has been created since the program's inception  in 2002 - with a new Economic Redevelopment and Growth Grant program (ERGG).

A 2.5 percent affordable-housing fee on nonresidential development that suburban communities have blamed for stalling commercial activity also would be held temporarily, with developers who have already paid the fee eligible for a reimbursement.

And the legislation also would attempt to encourage new building on college campuses.

Read More Here.