Business As Usual in New Jersey

So competitors raised an eyebrow when they heard former state Concessions Supervisor Francis Hillman had gone into business with Jersey Ice.

Hillman retired on disability 13 months ago, a year after senior officials at the Department of Environmental Protection requested a state probe into his office. The Attorney General's Office would neither confirm nor deny it was conducting an investigation, and neither Hillman nor anyone at Jersey Ice has been accused of a crime.

A Star-Ledger review of 15 years of state records, however, uncovered numerous decisions Hillman made that benefited Jersey Ice.

Most notably, he put the Liberty State Park contract out to bid just twice in those years, a stark departure from the state's standard practice of competitive bids every three to five years. Both times, Jersey Ice was the sole bidder.

In the most recent contest, in 2001, Hillman asked every other bidder to complete a qualifying process so rigorous that none ended up bidding. Jersey Ice won the contract, a prize that could be worth $1 million a year, for the minimum bid of $135,000.

Liberty State Park is the most lucrative park in the state park system for New Jersey and attracts more than 5 million visitors annually. If there was underbidding and favoritism (that's corruption in my book) in the bidding process, which made it impossible for other parties to win in a competitive bid, the State lost out on significant income. And that income would come in handy with a backlog of projects that need attention within the system.