Pictured is Ocean County Board of Commissioners member Frank Sadeghi shaking hands with Ocean County GOP Chairman George Gilmore at Sadeghi's swearing in, January 2024. Photo courtesy: Ocean County Public Information Office.
Prior to Ocean County Republican Chair George Gilmore's 2019 conviction on three federal tax charges, he tightly controlled County politics, giving his allies political positions in exchange for them appointing his other allies comfortable attorney and engineer positions.
One of the law firms supported by Gilmore's political leadership was his own now-defunct law firm, Gilmore & Monahan which made between $2 million and $3 million in public contracts annually between 2012 and 2018.
Lakewood Township at one point was among the municipalities who counted Gilmore & Monahan as one of their Special Counsel appointees.
After Gilmore's conviction he lost both his political leadership post as well as his work with public entities.
At that point, the Ocean County political spectrum broke into two groups, with some members backing a new group led by Frank Holman III and other members holding onto Frank Sadeghi, a Gilmore ally who just so happened to also be the founder of Morgan Engineering. Holman successfully used this support to bring some fresh faces into political power.
Sadeghi however did not forget his newly humbled buddy. Just several months after Gilmore’s conviction, Sadeghi founded Morgan Municipal Services, counting Gilmore’s wife, Joanne, as one of its three founding partners.
This new division, which was intended to expand the firm’s work in the public sector was Gilmore's key ally's way of enabling him to continue earning money — if only indirectly — through public contracts.
Last year, Morgan Engineering submitted a proposal to the Lakewood Township Committee to receive a contract for Special Projects.
At the time, the Committee rejected this request in favor of giving it to NewLines Engineering instead.
Last year, Gilmore kicked out Joe Vicari, a long time Ocean County Commissioner who backed Holman in favor of Sadeghi. In his stead, Gilmore stuck in his buddy Sadeghi. This year as well, Gilmore evicted Holman-supporters Gary Quinn and Barbara Jo Crea and replaced them with Rob Arace and Jennifier Bacchione.
All this leadership activity has made the Lakewood Township Committee come to realize that Gilmore has truly made a remarkable come-back and can "shake it and bake it" for those who play on his team.
Deputy Mayor Menashe Miller who is eyeing his own prospects for a County position is especially paying attention.
Accordingly, even without asking for submission of formal proposals as the Township required in past years, the Committee - seeing this as a way of finding favor with Gilmore - has now handed over the Special Projects contract to Morgan Engineering.
Yes, it's true that this means NewLines Engineering was now shown the door. Apparently they didn't contribute enough to Menashe's Lakewood Chamber of Commerce. Oh well.
Lakewood isn't the only municipality who is playing and paying the Gilmore line.
Sadeghi and Morgan Engineering contributed to both Mordy Burnstein's political action committee (PAC) and his reelection campaign.
Burnstein returned the favor by handing Morgan Engineering the Special Projects contract.
To join the FAA News WhatsApp Status, click here.
3 comments:
אמרה ליה נהור נהוריך כשרגא א"ל רבן גמליאל אתא חמרא ובטש לשרגא
(שבת קט"ז, ב)
Good article on the Ocean County corrupt swamp.
It's kind of funny when you have looses responding to these articles in some kind of Egyptian hieroglyphs.What does that mean.English English
Post a Comment