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John Comegno, chairman of the Burlington County Bridge Commission, says the agency today is a model that has learned from its problems of the past.

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Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2010

Burlco Bridge Commission has deep ties to county GOP

By Maya Rao

Inquirer Staff Writer

As he assumed control of the obscure but powerful Burlington County Bridge Commission three years ago, chairman John Comegno oversaw the launch of a public-relations campaign designed to burnish a badly tarnished image.

The commission, historically a piggy bank for the Burlington County Republicans that collects almost $30 million a year in tolls on the Tacony-Palmyra and Burlington-Bristol Bridges, was reeling.

Its longtime lobbyist had just pleaded guilty to fraudulently billing the agency in what he would later describe in court as a scheme to kick back money to the county's influential Republican Party.

Although never charged with wrongdoing, two of the bridge commission's top leaders - chairman J. Garfield DeMarco, a former county GOP chairman, and executive director George Nyikita, a contributor to the party - left after the scandal.

A new public-relations officer quickly came up with a catchy slogan to herald the reforms Comegno planned: "New Era, New Span."

"We're going to take a fresh look at the way the commission does business," Comegno, an up-and-coming Moorestown lawyer, pledged after taking office in January 2007.

Now, as Comegno, 37, begins a second term, the commission has compiled a solid record of accomplishment and remained scandal free.

But the reform agenda has had little effect on Republican ties to the commission. It remains an agency run by party supporters and served by lawyers, engineers, and other professional-services contractors who regularly contribute to GOP candidates in the county. Those candidates often then give and receive money from the Burlington County Republican Committee, which raises more than any of its 20 counterparts across New Jersey.

An Inquirer review of campaign-finance reports, contracts, and other records shows that:

The commission and its staff have a number of Republican ties. Comegno's law firm, the Comegno Law Group, is a GOP donor. The executive director is the son of a Republican political action committee treasurer. And the new chief financial officer is a former GOP councilwoman from Riverton.

The law firm Capehart Scatchard, an influential backer of the Burlington County Republican Party, has received $2.2 million in legal fees since 2007. That's the equivalent of billing 13 hours a workday over the last three years.

Seven of the 10 professional-services firms that receive the most money from the commission have donated more than $600,000 to Republicans in Burlington County during the last three years. Of that amount, $250,000 came from the commission's engineering firm, Pennoni Associates.

The bridge commission did not go at its reform efforts alone. It benefited from the retention of a man well-suited for this particular turnaround: North Jersey Republican W. Cary Edwards, a former assemblyman whose gold-plated party credentials are burnished by a stint as state attorney general in the 1980s and his current position as chairman of the State Commission of Investigation.

His assessment of the 2007 commission: "Their operating procedures were very old - backwoods, I guess, is the way to describe it," he said. "And they were not contemporary with the modern requirements for a government agency, operationally and in their perception from the outside."

Today, according to Edwards, "it is an open, accountable, transparent government operation now that has significant checks and balances in places that operationally they never, ever had before."

Comegno described the commission as a model of transparency and accountability, saying political relationships and donations are not related to agency operations in any way.

He noted that the $2 toll on commission spans has stayed flat for a decade and is half that on bridges run by the Delaware River Port Authority.

And on Tuesday, Comegno and his fellow commissioners, Republican Priscilla Anderson and Democrat Troy Singleton, voted to forgo their $14,439 in salaries and benefits, citing Gov. Christie's efforts to control spending during the state's fiscal crisis.

Comegno is "very well-spoken, and I think he's a good commissioner," said Lumberton resident Richard Young, who occasionally attends commission meetings and has expressed support for a major agency project to remove debris from Rancocas Creek. "He's a Republican, but I don't hold that against him."

Not surprising, Chris Brown, one of two Democrats on the five-member Burlington County Board of Chosen Freeholders, who voted against Comegno's reappointment in January, sees things differently.

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