Senate candidate off to controversial start
Singh faces ethics probe, campaign finance criticisms
BY CHRIS GAETANO
Staff Writer

State Senate Democratic candidate Seema Singh's conduct during her tenure as ratepayer advocate has become the subject of an ethics probe that the campaign insists has no merit.

The complaint, filed in December, alleges that when Singh was ratepayer advocate for New Jersey in 2003, she hired former chief of staff Leora Mosston as a consultant shortly after Mosston's retirement, bolstering her $2,357 monthly pension with a $125-an-hour contract for legal services, almost double what she had been making before. John Duthie, Singh's campaign manager, confirmed that Mosston was indeed hired by the then-ratepayer advocate at that time, but said that this was not improper, because she needed to handle a very large caseload because of staffing issues at the department.

"From my understanding, when Seema came on as ratepayer advocate, she wasn't given a staff, and … there are cases piling up, people have issues and want them taken care of, and [Mosston] was kept on to help deal with the complaints of the citizens," said Duthie.

The ratepayer advocate, whose office became known as the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel when it was recently absorbed into the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate (DPA), acts as a representative of the consumer in matters of utility rates through its membership in all state utility policy-making groups.

Singh, of South Brunswick who is running in District 14 Middlesex/Mercer, said that she had not even been made aware that there was an investigation against her, though she is confident that it will conclude in her favor.

"I have not been notified of any ethics investigation pending against me. I have always held myself to the highest ethical standards and I am fully confident that if there is an investigation pending, that they will find I acted in a way that meets the full letter and spirit of the law. If there is an investigation pending, of which I have not been notified, then I would request that it be expedited so that the truth becomes clear and we can move past these innuendoes," Singh said in a prepared statement.

DPA spokesperson Nancy Parello confirmed that a complaint about Singh had been filed with her office, which they then forwarded to the State Ethics Commission. Since the ratepayer advocate position was changed to the ratepayer counsel, the office has stopped using privately contracted legal consultants, though Parello said this was more for efficiency reasons than ethical concerns, since many positions were duplicated when the DPA absorbed the job. Because the shift had created many changes in the department, Parello was not able to comment on how common privately contracted consultants were before the reorganization, or how much, on average, they were paid.

Duthie said that the practice was not uncommon. He also said that the timing of this complaint seemed more than a little suspicious.

"Seema has never met or talked with [the person who lodged the complaint], and it is kind of coincidental that all of a sudden she becomes a candidate and something that happened, supposedly, almost a year ago, comes … as a shot across her bow to be served with these ethics investigations, and we're finding it very strange and suspicious," said Duthie.

Singh agreed with this assessment, saying Tuesday that she had been "dragged into something unfair."

This is not the first time Singh's integrity has been challenged in the course of the campaign. Earlier this month it was revealed that Singh had received contributions from some of the utility companies she spent her time as ratepayer advocate opposing, though the Singh campaign has said that this does not represent a conflict of interest. Duthie supported this assertion by citing her history of conflicts with utility companies, notably her resistance to an Exxon merger.

"She helped squash the Exxon merger and she was one of the attorneys before the Board of Public Utilities (BPU), and I think it's pretty well understood that if that was allowed to happen, it would be a huge monopoly with rates going up," said Duthie. "Whenever there was a complaint given against the utility companies and they had to go before the BPU and decide something, it was Seema who took the case on to stand up to these folks and say, 'Look, you're messing with these people's rates.' "

According to state Election Enforcement Commission (ELEC) records, Singh received $2,600 from the CEO of New Jersey Natural Gas, $500 from Aqua America's political action committee and $500 from the CEO of Rockland Electric Co. during her primary. During her seed money campaign, she received $300 from the CEO of PSE&G.

Singh's legislative district is one of three participating in the Fair and Clean Elections (FACE) Pilot Project, where campaigns will be publicly funded if a candidate can find at least 400 people to donate $10 to their cause. A provision in FACE allows candidates to raise up to $10,000 in "seed money" contributions of up to $500 each in order to finance the quest for $10 donations. It was in these seed money contributions, as well as in the currently unregulated primaries, that these contributions were made.

Duthie said that while Singh is "understandably upset" at these allegations, she will continue to press on with her campaign against Republican Bill Baroni for the seat being left open by the retiring Peter Inverso.