ASHINGTON - Days after the White House gave a big boost to a proposed shopping mall in sensitive wetlands outside New York City, the development company's executives and their relatives gave at least $31,000 to Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign.
For years, environmentalists have opposed building an upscale shopping and entertainment complex in Carlstadt, N.J., because it would require filling more than 90 acres of marshland that is home to rare waterfowl and other wildlife. The US Fish and Wildlife Service opposed the project for the same reason, then reversed itself as part of a federal endorsement engineered by the White House for the complex.
Executives of the development company, Mills Corp., and a spokesman for Gore denied that there was any connection between endorsement of the project and the campaign contributions.
Once the site of unrestricted development and huge mounds of garbage alongside the New Jersey Turnpike, the 8,000 undeveloped acres in the New Jersey Meadowlands are gradually being reclaimed. Because the acreage is primarily wetlands, the federal government has to approve any development there.
The various federal agencies involved could not agree on whether Mills and other developers should be allowed to build in the Meadowlands. So the White House Council on Environmental Quality took the lead in trying to resolve the question and brokered the endorsement.
The council is closely affiliated with Gore, who has made environmental protection one of his top issues.
Mills executives made their contributions to the Gore campaign on April 28 and 29, 1999, according to federal records, within a week after White House staff coordinated the endorsement that improved the mall's prospects. The contributions had been solicited by the Gore campaign in February 1999, according to a company executive.
Staff at the Council on Environmental Quality say they briefed Gore on the mall project as the agreement was being negotiated, but that he made no effort to influence the decision.
Environmentalists were outraged, and said the White House was going against its commitment to save wetlands.
''This is a good example of special-interest money trying to influence public policy,'' said Jeff Tittle, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, which wants the affected area set aside as a wildlife reserve. ''New Jersey needs more malls like Washington needs more bureaucrats.''
Jim Kennedy, a Gore spokesman, said this week that the contributions played no role in shaping federal policy. He said the decision struck a balance between preserving open space and private property rights. He added that the federal agreement in some ways went against the developer because it halved the size of the project, which originally was more than 200 acres.
''There is certainly no connection between anyone's contributions and the administration's work on this management plan,'' said Kennedy. ''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.''
Brad Campbell, who was then with the Council on Environmental Quality, said Gore was briefed on the proposal to prepare him for reporters' questions.
James Dausch, a vice president for development at Mills, said the company had been trying to get approval for the mall project from the necessary state and federal agencies for more than five years.
''There wasn't any connection'' between the contributions and the federal decision, he said.
Mills executives have not been big political contributors in recent years. Their contributions to candidates in federal races totaled $36,500 from 1995 through 1998, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group that tracks money in politics.
Their donations jumped last year to $48,250, in large measure because of the contributions to the Gore campaign.
