{"id":2907,"date":"2013-10-31T07:13:42","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T11:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=2907"},"modified":"2013-10-31T07:13:42","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T11:13:42","slug":"letter-questions-mcqueens-campaign-contributions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=2907","title":{"rendered":"Letter: Questions McQueen’s campaign contributions"},"content":{"rendered":"

To The Editor,<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Letters11\"<\/a>I was reviewing the campaign contributions of the Republican Controller candidate, Norman MacQueen. Mr. MacQueen is also an elected Supervisor in Willistown Township.<\/p>\n

I was reviewing the contributions because the Controller’s position is a very important position. The Controller is the “watchdog” for county government and the office must be an example of high integrity.<\/p>\n

What caught my interest, after I was contacted by a fellow Democrat, was that John Payne, who is employed by Remington & Vernick Engineers as an engineer, contributed $250.00 to Mr. MacQueen’s Controller’s campaign on June 13, 2013.<\/p>\n

Looking further on the campaign contributions, I then noticed on October 10, 2013, the Vice President of Remington & Vernick Engineers contributed $1,000.00 to Norman MacQueen’s campaign.<\/p>\n

Between those two contributions, on September 23, 2013, Willistown Township awarded Remington & Vernick a contract for $40,000.00 for construction management for a remodeling of the Willistown Police Station. It appears this contract was a non-bid contract because it was for professional services. It does not appear to have been done through a sealed bidding process.<\/p>\n

I also noted Mr. MacQueen was not present at the September 23, 2013 meeting and, therefore, did not vote.<\/p>\n

As far as I can see, there would be no connection of Remington & Vernick to the Controller’s office, but certainly that business has an interest in Willistown Township. This clearly raises some concerns.<\/p>\n

The concerns were somewhat heightened since I knew in the past from looking at campaign records, that this firm had been a major contributor to Sen. Vincent Fumo’s various campaigns.<\/p>\n

Certainly, I think this is a fair discussion in a political year.<\/p>\n

Finally, whether this is “pay to play” or not, I believe that the Chester County voters need an explanation from someone who is seeking the most important office of fiscal integrity, the Controllers office of Chester County.<\/p>\n

Samuel C. Stretton,<\/strong><\/p>\n

West Chester<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To The Editor, I was reviewing the campaign contributions of the Republican Controller candidate, Norman MacQueen. Mr. MacQueen is also an elected Supervisor in Willistown Township. I was reviewing the contributions because the Controller’s position is a very important position. The Controller is the “watchdog” for county government and the office must be an example […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2081,2082,2083,2084],"class_list":["post-2907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters","tag-election-2013","tag-norman-macqueen","tag-remington-vernick","tag-willistown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}