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HenchPAC NewsWASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign received thousands of dollars in donations from a developer days after the White House endorsed that company's plans to build a shopping mall on environmentally sensitive wetlands in New Jersey, according to a published report.
Mills Corp. wanted to build an upscale shopping complex in Carlstadt, N.J., but environmentalists opposed it for years because the construction would mean filling more than 90 acres of marshland, where rare wildlife can be found.
Because the 8,000 or so acres of the New Jersey Meadowlands, once the site of unfettered development and garbage dumps, are primarily wetlands, federal agencies must approve any new development there. And although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service originally opposed Mills' project, it gave its support after intervention from the White House.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency and other state and federal offices gave preliminary endorsement to the project April 22. About a week after the endorsement, Mills executives and their relatives gave at least $31,000 to Gore's campaign, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in Saturday's editions.
Mills executives and Gore have denied any connection.
But Jeff Tittle, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, isn't convinced.
"This is a good example of special-interest money trying to influence public policy," Tittle said. "New Jersey needs more malls like Washington needs more bureaucrats."
Another environmental group, Friends of the Earth Political Action Committee, earlier this year reported that executives, contractors and family members of the Mills Corp. had given Gore $43,000 for his campaign. The environmental group reported those numbers after the Clinton-Gore administration expressed support for a mall by the same company on 500 acres of wetlands in the Meadowlands. It's not clear if that report is related to The Inquirer's report on the site in Carlstadt.
Gore's spokesman, Jim Kennedy, denied that the donations reported in The Inquirer influenced policy.
Kennedy said the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which is closely affiliated with Gore, tried to resolve the dispute by working to strike a balance between private property and open space rights. He said the deal cut the size of the original proposal in half.
"There is certainly no connection between anyone's contributions and the administration's work on the management plan," Kennedy said. "The White House became involved at the request of environmentalists and helped fashion a solution which benefits the environment and in fact bars the Mills Corp. from building the mall it had planned."
James Dausch, vice president for development at Mills, said the company worked for five years to get the necessary approvals. Dausch also said there was no connection between the decisions and the contributions.
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