This was from a few days ago - todays paper has an article on how Carla Katz got an exemption from the DEP to the Highlands Act to build. HMMM sounds like Pay to Play to me. The DEP really needs to know that people are watching and the law is the law.

Lisa

August 8, 2005
Page: A1


Jon Corzine says the loan to Carla Katz was a personal loan
Gannett State Bureau

Jon Corzine says the loan to Carla Katz was a personal loan and didn't think it had to be reported.

Corzinedoled out twoother big loans

GOPofficial: Senator reported money he gave to two women,but hid loan to union leader

By TOM BALDWIN

GANNETT STATE BUREAU

TRENTON -- Gubernatorial nominee U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine tried to hide the fact he gave his onetime sweetheart $470,000, according to a top Republican who Monday identified two other women who received similarly hefty loans from Corzine.

Proof that Corzine hid the loan to union leader Carla Katz is that he identified the two other women in U.S. Senate financial disclosure forms, which he did not do in the loan to Katz, said Republican Party state chairman Tom Wilson.

"He didn't want people to know," Wilson said of why Corzine did not include the Katz loan on his disclosure form. Corzine later forgave the loan, which had enabled Katz to buy out her former husband's ownership of the Hunterdon County home they shared.

Katz is president of Local 1034 of the Communications Workers of America, which represents 9,000 state workers and, six months after the loan was forgiven, endorsed Corzine's candidacy, replete with a peck on the cheek.

Corzine has said there was no trade-off. He insists the romance is ended. He also said he did not initially reveal the Katz loan because he believed he did not have to report a personal loan.

"If Mr. Corzine believes that personal loans are not reportable, then why on a previous disclosure form did he disclose two other personal loans he made?" Wilson asked.

In response, Corzine campaign spokeswoman Ivette Mendez said, "Mr. Forrester's surrogates are using Jon Corzine's personal life as a device to distract voters. ... They are trying to manufacture a scandal that doesn't exist."

Wilson went out of his way to avoid any allegations that Corzine --who separated from his longtime wife in 2002 and divorced in 2003 --had a romantic relationship with the other two women.

"Who cares who they are?"Wilson asked. "That's not important."

On his 1999 and 2000 disclosure forms, a loan of between $250,000 and $500,000 was reported as having been made to Avis Yates, who pops up in Internet searches as a New Jersey businesswoman with a Newark consulting company, Technology Concepts Group Inc.

Yates did not respond to calls asking why she secured the loan, which was no longer reported beginning with Corzine's 2001 disclosure form.

Another loan of the same size went in 2001 to Diane Kessenich of New York. A similar Internet search suggests she heads a publishing company. She did not respond to messages left on a tape at a phone listed in her name.

The loan to Kessenich only appeared on the form covering year 2001.

"They were small-business loans," said Mendez. "I don't have information on who they are."

And Katz, who since Friday has refused to come to the phone or return calls to Gannett New Jersey, popped up in yet another address Monday.

A telephone book for Hunterdon County lists Carla Katz as residing on Maple Spring Road in Pittstown, in a development of colonial homes, where a woman who came to the door Monday -- not Katz -- said she did not know when Katz would return.

Learning the visitor was a reporter, she said, "Leave her property and stay off," before closing the door.

In addition to the Bloomsbury house she bought with Corzine's money, Katz has an address at the Pittstown dwelling, and her phone number is listed as being in Corzine's apartment building.

Over the weekend, Corzine said Katz has an apartment in his Hoboken building but that it is not shared with the senator.

"Their relationship is over," Mendez said.