Well-Connected Lawyer Challenges New Ethics Law

The Record
November 25, 2007
By Oshrat Carmiel

Dennis J. Oury is the lawyer of choice for Bergen County's governing Democratic Party, the preferred legal mind for the county's bonding authority, and the man several towns turn to for zoning, planning and general advice.

Though they are all part time, these public sector jobs in Bergen County have brought Oury and the law firm that bears his name at least $2.4 million within the past three years and have added to his mounting pension payout from the state. In one town, he qualifies for public health insurance benefits.

By many accounts, Oury, 57, is the premier beneficiary of Bergen's Democratic spoils: lucrative public contracts awarded, without competitive bidding, to the most loyal of loyal party members who have track records as political donors. His son Dennis also holds a job in the county -- earning $64,000 as a messenger for a local utilities authority.

Coveted by many and secured by few, professional contracts, and who gets them, are the stuff of high drama in local government. And on Bergen's stage, Dennis Oury is the star, the most pronounced symbol of "pay-to-play" -- a practice that appears to reward private party patrons with public sector dollars.

It's all legal. And Oury is about to bet, in court, that no one really cares.

Giving some and getting more

Dennis Oury maintains a healthy business in public-sector legal work throughout Bergen County. Here is an estimate of his 2006 activity in contracts and direct political giving:

Town -- Earnings -- Political contributions*

Paramus -- $291,597 -- $5,425
Fort Lee -- $183,531 -- $1,000
Bergenfield -- $149,501 -- $3,000
Garfield -- $110,692 -- $250
Bergen County Improvement Authority -- $232,081 -- $12,650 **
Fairview -- $80,500 -- $1,000
Edgewater -- $35,773 -- $600
Ridgefield -- $337.50 -- $750
Demarest -- $1,219 -- NA
New Milford -- $12,369 -- $275

*Contributions reflect only direct donations to municipal candidates and committees in calendar year 2006. Money given to the Bergen County Democratic Organization indirectly benefits local races as well.

**Contributions made to the Bergen County Democratic Organization and to countywide and legislative candidates backed by the Bergen County Democratic Organization.

Source: New Jersey Elections Enforcement Commission; municipal billing records

He's announced plans for a lawsuit to challenge a state ethics law designed to sever the perceived link between political contributions and government contracts. On behalf of the Bergen County Democratic Organization, Oury will claim that the state's pay-to-play restrictions -- which limit how much government work is awarded to firms making political donations -- are an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

"The average guy in the street doesn't care about pay-to-play, nor probably should he," Oury said in an interview this summer. "He cares about if my taxes are going to go up. Am I going to have health care coverage? ... That's what he cares about."

Oury declined to comment for this article. But critics of his proposed suit, which was delayed until after Election Day, apparently to avoid making it a campaign liability, are crying foul, saying Oury is seeking legal protection for a patronage system that has overwhelmingly favored him.

"It's at the height of hypocrisy," said Paul Eisenman, chairman of Bergen Grassroots, a reformist group seeking to ban no-bid contracts for political donors in all of Bergen's 70 towns.

"He's obviously a very comfortable man financially, and it's all directly connected."

Oury, a Hackensack attorney whose private clients range from real estate developers to adult video stores and go-go bars, has spent at least $105,000 on Democratic candidates and causes since 1999. He gave the majority of that money to the Bergen County Democratic Organization and its affiliated committees, and most of it in the last three years.

His public work in Democratic-controlled Bergen alone has yielded $760,000 to $1.1 million in annual income in the last three calendar years -- a return on investment that would impress the most aggressive mutual fund managers. In a disclosure filing with the state -- a new ethics requirement that went into effect in October -- Oury reported $936,233 in income from public contracts in Bergen and Hudson counties last year, though in some cases the reported earnings appear to exclude what he makes as a salaried employee in some towns.

"These are business investments," said former Democratic Assemblyman Matt Ahearn of Fair Lawn.

Business executives, he said, "would be in trouble if they were giving [company] money away based on their own personal political, free speech preferences."

Ahearn left the Democratic Party in the middle of his legislative term for the Green Party in 2003 after a falling out with Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero.

Citing past experience as a councilman in Fair Lawn, Ahearn said that after every election, Democratic county leaders would dictate to the council majority which professionals should be awarded contracts. Council members interested in reelection knew they had to obey, he said.

"The business of these local governments is to take in tax dollars and spend it on services -- services that involve various attorneys, various engineers," he said. "The slicing of that pie has become what New Jersey local politics is all about."

Ferriero said Ahearn's claim is "absolutely not" true, saying that, as a county chairman, he holds no sway in municipal contracting. The handful of professional firms that appear repeatedly in many towns do so, Ferriero said, because they network and appear at social gatherings where they meet officials face to face.

"People go to political events and meet elected officials and express their experience and get to know them," Ferriero said.

Ahearn now volunteers for the Citizens' Campaign, a statewide organization affiliated with Bergen Grassroots -- Eisenman's group -- working to persuade municipalities statewide to ban no-bid contracts to political donors. He disagreed with Oury's contention that voters don't care about pay-to-play. The practice of no-bid contracting, he said, can drive up property taxes -- which voters care about deeply.

"There's a valid point to be made that when large contributions are made by enterprises that largely exist on government contracts, that the price of those contributions are built into the price of their contracts," Ahearn said.

Under attack

Oury's billing suggests an almost bottomless well of legal lucre. He billed the Bergen County Improvement Authority for the cost of doing legal research on the state's pay-to-play laws. He billed Bergenfield for the cost of writing a letter to the council about an unflattering newspaper article on his billing practices.

He even makes money from attempts to find out how much he makes -- charging the BCIA $2,000 for helping to comply with a public records request from The Record into his and other firms' contracts with BCIA.

Though his supporters assert that Oury's work and his party activism are not related, several changes in the political winds appear to threaten his public sector livelihood.

In Bergenfield, Democrat Timothy Driscoll won the mayoral race this month on a platform of pay-to-play reform. He announced shortly after his win that he'd like to sever the town's ties with Oury and find "somebody outside the process."

Oury's outspoken support for the pay-to-play lawsuit in the months leading up to this year's election angered party leaders in Bergen, some insiders say, and may cost him some of his public-sector work in January, when municipal councils reorganize.

The lawsuit -- which has not yet been filed -- is being studied by a committee of the Bergen County Democratic Organization, which will decide in the coming months whether to go forward, said Ferriero, who supports it.

Oury has held side jobs in the public sector for at least 24 years, public records show, and would collect an annual pension of about $80,000 if he retired at the end of October.

Oury does not appear ready to retire, even though his primary residence -- where his wife lives and where he commutes to each weekend -- is in Naples, Fla.

He is registered to vote in Edgewater and has voted regularly, missing only the 2005 primary and general elections.

And he maintains a healthy side practice of public contracts in at least nine Bergen towns and public agencies, getting paid both as an independent contractor and a salaried employee -- sometimes with health benefits -- of several towns. That's all in addition to private work he does for the party and its affiliates.

In a special report to the Legislature in 2006, the state Division of Pensions and Benefits compiled a top 100 list of employees with multiple state jobs that contribute to an eventual state pension. Oury, with his patchwork of pensionable jobs, was listed in the top 30, based on his 2005 earnings.

Among his publicly funded -- though not pensionable -- jobs is a $250,000-a-year contract as counsel for the BCIA, an independent agency that is authorized to issue debt.

The agency has been aggressively courting towns to borrow through its name, and Oury, by contract, receives additional payments from the fees associated with issuing bonds.

Oury's firm has never reached or exceeded the annual $250,000 cap on legal work allowed by his contract, records show. But his most recent contracts with the agency anticipate that the firm may exceed that sum. They give the board the right to pay Oury beyond the cap.

Ronald O'Malley, chairman of the BCIA, said Oury's contract was amended to reflect the increased responsibilities that landed on the BCIA's doorstep in 2004, including oversight of the capping and redevelopment of the Overpeck Landfill and control of the Overpeck County Park equestrian center.

"There was an increase in county assets," O'Malley said. "We were given the largest rehabilitation project in the history of the county, and we were given the stables."

A triple threat

In Fort Lee, Oury holds three jobs: He is the special economic development counsel for the borough agency charged with attracting business to town; attorney for the Planning Board, which passes judgment on development plans for the borough; and attorney for the Board of Adjustment, a judicial body with the power to override zoning rules in favor of a development.

Holding all three jobs at once effectively makes Oury the ultimate arbiter on what gets built in the densely populated borough.

"It would seem that there are many potential conflicts in those positions," said Marvin Rothenberg, secretary-treasurer for the Fort Lee Co-operative and Condominium Association, which monitors political and spending issues in the borough.

"If there's something the economic development department thinks should be approved, and he's the lawyer for that group, he'd have to say he supports it. But then if it comes before the zoning board," which is a deliberative, neutral body, "there's a conflict," Rothenberg said.

Oury's work for the Board of Adjustment pays him $18,470 annually through the borough payroll, and is included in his pension calculations. He earns an additional $70,000 in contract salary for his work on the other two boards. On top of that, he collects fees paid by developers to cover the cost of legal review for their plans.

Last year, Oury made $88,000 from developer's fees -- bringing his 2006 earnings from Fort Lee alone to more than $177,000, though he reports slightly higher earnings in his recent disclosure report.

Oury also spreads around political donations, regularly giving to Democrats in towns where he holds contracts.

He donated $3,000 to the campaigns of Fort Lee Democrats in 2003 and gave $1,000 last year.

In Bergenfield, a borough of about 27,000 people, Oury has given about $5,700 to the Democratic Committee since October 2005.

Last year, he earned about $149,000 in Bergenfield -- $40,000 from a pensionable salary and $109,000 in legal fees.

His fees became an issue in this year's mayoral race, when some Democratic candidates observed that he charged the borough for time spent talking to officials from the county Democratic Organization.

"This is just another example of bossism," Democratic Councilman Bruce Carlson said at the time. "Dennis Oury has been a contributor to all of Bergenfield's Democratic campaigns, and the taxpayers of our town are paying him back. It is a clean-cut example of pay-to-play."

The allegations appeared in a Record article last spring for which Oury declined to comment. But he did draft an explanation to the Bergenfield Borough Council after the article was published. His firm charged the borough for the cost of drafting that letter, at a paralegal rate of $75 per hour, according to legal bills.

Paramus is the plum of Oury's political jobs. It paid him and his firm about $290,000 in 2006, a 17 percent increase over what he billed the borough in the previous year. He earned $30,000 as a salaried employee, and the rest came through legal billing. And on top of that, he received publicly funded health insurance benefits -- the same as a full-time borough employee, according to his 2006 contract.

He has donated more than $12,000 to the Paramus Democratic Municipal Committee since 2003 and gave and additional $2,000 to the mayor's reelection campaign last year.

"I don't think Dennis gets hired because of political contributions, if that's what you're asking," Ferriero said. "The contributions have no bearing. I think the fact that he's actively involved, representing elected officials in close elections, being supportive, those things absolutely put him in a light where he gets to know public officials, and people get to respect his abilities."

"Dennis was someone who worked hard," Ferriero added. "He's obviously been involved in the party for a long time, and he has, certainly, an expertise in governmental law, which is why he gets hired."

He also has legal jobs in Garfield, Fairview, Edgewater and New Milford, according to borough records and the disclosure he filed last month with the state. In Hudson County, his firm has served as counsel to the Union City Redevelopment Agency.

Sons have county jobs

Oury isn't the only one in his family getting public work.

Since 2004, his son Dennis, 26, has been a full-time employee at the Bergen County Utilities Authority, the sewer and water agency covering the southern part of the county. His job title is senior messenger, a state civil service position, with defined job functions that include "receipt, sorting, collection, pickup and delivery of letters, messages, packages, records and other items."

The job, under state personnel rules, requires a driver's license that is valid in New Jersey, though not necessarily a New Jersey license.

Florida public records show that the younger Oury -- who owns a second home in Fort Myers, Fla. -- traded in his New Jersey license in 2006, in exchange for a Florida driver's license, a Florida DMV spokeswoman said.

Another of Oury's sons was an $11-an-hour summer intern at the BCUA last summer, one of several students in that position, BCUA Executive Director Leonard Kaiser confirmed.

"We bring in college kids to supplement the workforce," said Kaiser, who added that students hear about the summer work program "through word-of-mouth."

"There is no connection," Kaiser said, between the sons' work at the BCUA and their father's status in the county party.

"You don't take money from people and promise them work," Ferriero said. "It doesn't happen. At least, it doesn't happen in Bergen County."