Clark Mayor Used Town Employees To Run Personal Business: Authorities

CLARK, NJ — Long-time Clark Mayor Salvatore Bonaccorso pleaded guilty on Friday for using Township employees for his private business, announced Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA).

Bonaccorso, 64, of Clark, who has been the township’s mayor since 2001, pleaded guilty on Jan. 10 in New Jersey Superior Court to a two-count accusation charging him with conspiring to commit official misconduct (third-degree) and forgery (third-degree).

The second count stems from his admission to falsifying permit applications to municipalities, which enabled his landscaping company to improperly and unlawfully obtain permits to remove hundreds of underground tanks, said Platkin.

As part of his agreement with OPIA to plead guilty, Bonaccorso immediately forfeited his office as mayor of Clark and agreed to be permanently barred from holding any future public office or employment.

"Today’s guilty plea secured by OPIA ends a long and sad betrayal of the community by someone who had been in a position of power and trust for a long time," said Platkin. "Anyone who betrays the public’s trust by placing their own interests ahead of their duty as a public servant to New Jersey residents will be held accountable. Let me be clear: I will never stop rooting out corruption in New Jersey, no matter how powerful the offenders may be."

"Bonaccorso used taxpayer-funded workers for personal gain. He abused his power over municipal personnel, finances, and operations, and he submitted false documents to keep the scheme going," said Drew Skinner, Executive Director of OPIA. "My office will investigate and prosecute anyone who illegally abuses the public’s trust."

The mayor and his company, Bonaccorso & Son LLC, also agreed to be ineligible from bidding for any public contracts, entering into any public contracts, or conducting any business with the State or its political subdivisions for five years.

Bonaccorso and his company are also barred for three years from conducting, or contracting to conduct, any storage tank removals for any private commercial or residential property owners.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, the State will recommend that Bonaccorso face three years of probation and impose a fine of $15,000, the maximum allowable fine for conviction of a third-degree crime.

Bonaccorso was charged by the OPIA on Nov. 20, 2023, after an investigation by the Corruption Bureau found that, while acting as Mayor, Bonaccorso operated his oil tank removal business out of his township office using municipal resources.

The complaint claims Bonaccorso stored and maintained the records for the business at the mayor’s office, using township equipment including computers and fax machines, and directing or using township employees to perform duties while those employees were working for and being paid by the township, solely for the purpose of running his business.

OPIA also found that Bonaccorso and his landscaping and underground storage tank company, Bonaccorso & Son, fraudulently used an engineer’s name, license number, as well as, in many cases, forging the engineer’s signature on permit applications submitted to municipalities for tank removals — knowing the engineer was neither supervising nor in any way involved in those projects, and without any legally required tank inspections actually taking place at the job sites.

Neither Bonaccorso nor his company have the necessary underground-storage-tank-removal license required to do such work, said Platkin.

It was found that Bonaccorso misrepresented to municipalities that the engineer was the on-site supervisor of the removal work, as required by New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) regulations, for all of the tank removals done by Bonaccorso & Son, said Platkin.

The investigation also found that Bonaccorso arranged to have the engineer get a storage-tank license and insurance, and Bonaccorso directly paid to maintain both. The value of the removal jobs associated with the fraudulent permits submitted by Bonaccorso between 2017 and 2023 amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars, said Platkin.

This isn't the first time Bonaccorso landed in hot water. In 2022, Gov. Phil Murphy called for Bonaccorso's resignation due to a released recording of him using "racist and sexist" language. Read More: Gov. Murphy 'Disturbed' By Clark Mayor Scandal, Calls For Resignation

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