Less Than One Month: NJ ELEC Broadens Annual Pay-to-Play Form & Requires Companies to Disclose Additional Information

Recent changes in the annual filing requirement for companies doing business with local, county or state government in New Jersey may make the process for completing this year’s ELEC Business Entity Annual Statement (“Form BE”) more complicated and time consuming. Although ELEC has yet to issue guidance on these additional requirements, government vendors must still electronically file the disclosure form by the March 30 submission deadline. In effect since 2006, Form BE requires every company that receives payments of $50,000 or more from New Jersey government entities to disclose those contracts as well as its reportable New Jersey political contributions. All businesses that receive such payments must file regardless of whether the company or certain associated people have made any reportable contributions, but the level of detail required by Form BE depends on whether you have any contributions to report. There are two new requirements for the 2015 reporting year (due March 30):

• Fair-and-Open Check Box Requirement: Check a box to indicate whether each contract was awarded pursuant to a “fair-and-open-process”; and
• Certification Requirement: Certify that the statements and/or information contained in Form BE are true and acknowledge that if any of the statements or information are willfully false that you may be subject to punishment.

Expect completing your 2015 Form BE to be more time consuming than in the past. Here are some obstacles to be on the alert for:

• Businesses may find it challenging and time consuming to identify whether a contract was awarded pursuant to a “fair-and-open-process” given that your 2015 Form BE may cover long-term contracts that could very well have been awarded years ago.
• In many cases it will be unclear how vendors should classify Executive Branch contracts awarded pursuant to a competitive process because the phrase “fair-and-open process” is a term of art with respect to county, municipal and legislative contracts.
• In past years, ELEC asked the person filing Form BE to simply “acknowledge” that he or she was familiar with the information contained in the Form BE. Now, ELEC is asking the person filing Form BE to certify to the accuracy of the statement and to acknowledge that he or she may be subject to punishment for willfully false information.