GOP CALLS ON GANZ, McPHERSON TO REVEAL FEES PAID BY BCIA TO CONSULTANTS

 BERGEN COUNTYREPUBLICAN ORGANIZATION

201-880-1646                                               

Freeholders Protecting Donors Who Get Big Fees   HACKENSACK – The Bergen County Republican freeholder candidates are demanding that Freeholders David Ganz, Bernadette McPherson and Vernon Walton turn over to the press and the public a list of the consultant fees generated by the Bergen County Improvement Authority for the last three years. 

 “The BCIA is in business to generate fees to key Democrat donors and that money is turned into campaign donations for the Democrat freeholders,” said GOP candidate Chris Calabrese. “Ganz, McPherson and Walton are the beneficiaries of secretive agency that is strong arming towns to take loans and the voters have a right to know how this corrupt system works.” 

Calabrese said the BCIA, which makes loans to municipalities and other agencies doles out millions each year in fees to a select group of consultants hand picked by the Democrat power brokers. But, said Calabrese, the fees are never disclosed. 

“The BCIA is nothing more than a conduit for campaign donations to the Democrat Party in Bergen County and I am calling on freeholders Ganz, McPherson and Walton to release the fees the BCIA paid over the last three years,” said Calabrese. The public has a right to know how the BCIA operates.” 

Republican freeholder candidate Jeffrey Heller, a former Ramsey councilman, said Ganz, McPherson and Walton are covering for the BCIA.

Earlier this week, the Bergen County Republican Chairman Robert Yudin wrote to U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, encouraging the federal prosecutor to investigate the operations of the BCIA.

The request came after County Executive Dennis McNerney attended a Glen Rock School Board meeting to pressure the board into taking a $45 million loan through the BCIA. The board said it rejected the offer because the arrangement were unrealistically optimistic and the fees too high. This was not the first time that the McNerney has been seeking work for the BCIA, which also loaned $103 million to the now bankrupt EnCap Company.

“It seems the BCIA exists not to help towns but to pay out huge fees to a small cadre of consultants who are growing rich at the expense of taxpayers,” said Paul Duggan, a GOP freeholder candidate from Bogota.   

Duggan noted that Freeholder Ganz helped engineer a BCIA loan for Fair Lawn when he was mayor of the borough. Ganz engineered a borrowing scheme for a no-bid, 25 year finance plan that will cost Fair Lawn taxpayers nearly $25 million for a $12 million loan. The plan included $207,000 in consultant fees paid for by taxpayers. Those fees ended up in the hands of firms and individuals who donated to Ganz and the Bergen County Democratic Organization, including $5,000 to BCDO attorney Dennis Oury, who is currently under federal investigation.

The county’s auditing firm Ferrailo Weilkotz made $16,220 – and had donated $77,000 to the Bergen Democrats at that time.