Adam Taylor has another article in today’s News Journal about Paul Clark, his latest Executive Assistant Terry Reilly, and land use. Terry Reilly was hired in January and makes $106,899 a year. According to the News Journal, she “was hired to help shepherd developers and businesses through the county’s cumbersome approval processes.”
Sounds like a lot of money to pay someone to help developers navigate our bureaucracy – don’t they already hire attorneys to do that? But guess what?
Terry Reilly also volunteers as Clark’s chief fundraiser for his political campaign, which, as the article details, is walking a fine line. Are developers encouraged to contribute to Clark’s campaign in trade for favorable consideration on their land use requests?
We shared Taylor’s first article on this subject back in January – he pointed out that most of Paul Clark’s contribution in 2011 came from developers and their supporting businesses (attorneys, engineering firms, etc) as well as his top New Castle County staff. You can view the entire Clark 4 NCC 2011 Annual Report as a pdf and see for yourself.
One thing we noticed were two $500 contributions on 9/29/2011 from two guys in North Carolina (James Martin of Gastonia and Cory Martin of Charlotte).
So …. Why would two guys from North Carolina give money to a county executive in Delaware?
Google turned up the answer. The Martins of North Carolina are bringing CVS Pharmacy to Delaware.
Looks like it started down in Ocean View – in the zoning commission meeting minutes from 10/15/2009 Cory Martin of JEM X Development answered questions about a proposed 13,000 sq ft CVS Pharmacy. In a news article last month, it looks like that project was finally approved.
A query of the NCCo Project Search turned up several CVS projects (just type “CVS” into the “Project Name” box). Like this one on New Castle Ave. If you read the exploratory plan report, you’ll see the Equitable Owner is listed as Jim Martin, JEM X, LLC. And a search of the North Carolina corporations website shows James Martin as an officer of JEM X LLC with the same PO Box used in Paul Clark’s financial report.
So did the $1,000 to Paul Clark’s campaign help them? Time will tell.
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