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Gilmore’s Cleaning Up

gilmoreOcean County GOP Chairman Geroge Gilmore is among a handful of connected lobbyists hired by AshBrit, the Florida company that won the sole state contract for Superstorm Sandy clean up, who was making sales calls to municipal officials looking for lucrative non-bid clean up work after then storm, according to an article in The Star Ledger this morning.

MMM was the first to report that former Corzine staffer Maggie Moran and her firm, M Public Affairs, was selling AshBrit’s premium priced services to Sandy ravaged municipalities.  The Ledger report expands the list of lobbyists working for AshBrit in New Jersey to Gilmore, former Corzine cabinet member Kris Kullari, and former Assembly Republican director Jon Bombardieri.

AshBrit has been widely praised for the quality of the clean up work it hired subcontractors to perform.  Their no-bid pricing is the issue.  AshBrit charged $100 per ton for debris removal. Towns that didn’t hire AshBrit got the work done for $26 per ton.

“If this isn’t a classic example of how everything is connected in New Jersey politics, I don’t know what is,” said state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who was Corzine’s running mate in 2009 when Moran managed his re-election campaign.

MMM is generally not a fan of Weinberg, but we are with her on this issue. Excess profits paid to AshBrit for making phone calls and signing contracts could have been used to rebuild infrastructure, house the displaced, etc, or not borrowed from China in the first place.

Gilmore got another new job last month. Just as MMM predicted last June during the Monmouth GOP Chairman’s race, Gilmore’s firm was appointed Assistant Monmouth County Counsel by the Board of Freeholders during their reorganization meeting.

Despite his threats to due so, John Bennett has not sued MMM for making that prediction.

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Posted: February 3rd, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: George Gilmore, Hurricane Sandy, John Bennett, Monmouth County, Monmouth County Board of Freeholders, Monmouth GOP | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

4 Comments on “Gilmore’s Cleaning Up”

  1. TR said at 12:05 pm on February 3rd, 2013:

    I wonder if JB enjoys being a vassal

  2. Truth2Power said at 4:55 pm on February 3rd, 2013:

    Another distressing sign that the only difference between R’s and D’s is who’s in power. Leadership means doing the right thing. Not the easy or self-empowering one. It means not winking at your foot-soldiers when they make deals to clean up from the public’s charity. It means cutting a disaster bill down to size so that future bills are not used as a license to steal the people’s money.

  3. FYI said at 11:41 pm on February 3rd, 2013:

    Mr. Gilmore’s firm did not attend the meeting held for all those firms appointed in Jan, in the pool of on-call attorneys, for 2013. Nice try at “gotcha”, but he has declined any Monmouth work for the year. Just because they successfully get appointed, does not guarantee them work,during the one-year professional contracts.

  4. Again, said at 11:46 pm on February 3rd, 2013:

    The AshBritt contract was let by the state AG ‘s ofc, to try and get something in place for the disaster, and several municipalities hooked on to it. And again, our Gov. said at the time, in this unprecedented disaster, act first for health, safety and welfare of your citizens, and ask for forgiveness later. We are all paying for all disasters , people, wherever they occur- we are still rebuilding New Orleans, for heaven’s sake.