The South Jersey Transportation Authority’s chief engineer wrote that the agency was “not permitted” to give new work to engineering firm T&M Associates, whose executive had defied South Jersey political boss George Norcross.
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By Andrew Seidman and Jeremy Roebuck, Philadelphia Inquirer, Published Apr. 29, 2024, 5:00 a.m.
The invoice was unremarkable.
Like many others submitted before and after, the payment request to the South Jersey Transportation Authority — which operates the Atlantic City Expressway and Atlantic City Airport — detailed services rendered, project costs, and time sheets.
At first, the state agency’s response was as routine as the paperwork filed by Middletown, N.J.-based engineering firm T&M Associates. The authority’s engineering department head marked the $22,449.74 bill — for a garage replacement project — as “approved for payment” on Jan. 25, 2023, and it was added to a list of invoices to be considered for approval at the agency’s next board meeting, in February.
Then something unusual happened.
After the board secretary sent a summary of those bills to the agency’s commissioners, the following day, Feb. 8, she received an email from board vice chairman Christopher M. Milam: “Please make an official note that I will be voting NO on the below listed bills. Just for point of clarification it is all the bills for T&M Assoc.”
Twenty minutes later, the secretary received a nearly identical email from another commissioner, Bryan J. Bush, saying he, too, would vote against approving T&M’s bills, which totaled about $68,000 for more than a half-dozen different projects, including the garage maintenance.
Related:
George Norcross investigation expands to include SJTA (Inquirer)
Tax Break Scandal Leads to $5 Million Fine (New York Times)
The contractor holdup (Politico)
The following week, the six commissioners in attendance voted unanimously to approve invoices submitted by nearly a dozen vendors — except T&M’s. The nine-member board continued to withhold payment until May, by which point the authority owed the contractor more than $165,000, records show.
The emails and invoices — among hundreds of documents obtained by The Inquirer through a public records request — offer a behind-the-scenes look at an episode that is now the subject of a grand jury investigation led by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and the FBI.
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