When you're moving to a new city or a new state, it's important to make an effort to familiarize yourself with the laws and bylaws of the area. Legislation varies from place to place and you can't just assume the rules will be the same as in the last home you have. So when your Toronto caterer boss sends you down to Newark to open up a franchise, make sure you look into Newark's particular bylaws and the New Jersey legislation. One of the biggest differences will probably be their Pay to Play legislation. We'll give you an overview here.
Pay to Play is a response to New Jersey's history. In some cities, governments became corrupted through taking payoffs from organized crime leaders to hire one of their companies instead of a non-organized crime company that had put in a lower bid. Even after the decline of organized crime, it was still not uncommon for political leaders to give city contracts to their supporters, who would use their PCB designer funds to support the politician's campaign.
With Pay to Play, politicians and elected leaders are not permitted to award contracts for city services and improvements to any vendor who has contributed to their campaign unless they have laid bare their books for all to see. This includes local, county, and regional governments, public libraries, fire districts, health boards, joint insurance funds, commercial mortgage lenders financing housing projects, zoning boards, colleges - pretty much anything in the public sector except schools and state taxation.
If you're planning on starting or working for a company that will be bidding on city contracts, you'll need to be familiar with its limits and procedures. The Pay to Play law comes into effect on any contract worth more than $17,500. That's relatively few gold bullion bars where business contracts are concerned. Over this amount, you will have to be very careful about supporting the political careers of those who are directly or indirectly responsible for awarding you the contract. This $17,500 applies not to the bid maximum but the bid amounts submitted by vendors.
Just to be safe, you shouldn't contribute more than $300 to the politician's campaign. This isn't just for the period leading up to the awarding of the contracts but applies for the life of the contract. That way the company doing the city's search engine marketing in Canada can't say "thank you" after the fact. If you must contribute more than that to the politician's campaign, you will have to jump through a lot of hoops to prove that it's not a bribe or payoff and that you really were the lowest bidder. So it is perhaps better to just keep donations under the limit.
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