'Unacceptable Risk' To Give E-ZPass Contract To Company With China Ties, NJ Lawmakers Say

NEW JERSEY — Legislators are demanding answers from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority over a contractor they selected to run the E-ZPass customer service center, over concerns about the company's Chinese ties.

At issue is a $1.73 billion contract that the Transit Authority awarded to TransCore LP, which has offices in Union, headquarters in Tennessee, and parent companies in Singapore.

TransCore was chosen over Conduent, a Newark-based company that submitted a lower-cost bid and had held the contract for more than 20 years. Conduent appealed the Authority's decision back in October, claiming that a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party member was on the board of one of the parent companies, as FOX Business and NJ.com reported.

Conduent's bid was $250 million less than TransCore's, Vice President Sean Collins said.

"As a New Jersey-based company with approximately 2,000 employees in the state, including nearly 300 in the City of Newark, we continue to believe that we have the best solution at the best price for the citizens of New Jersey," Collins said.

Now, U.S. Congressman Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ-2) and State Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris) are among those calling for state officials to re-evaluate or even void the TransCore contract, due to national security and data privacy concerns.

“Entrusting this sensitive information, including subscriber data such as home addresses, credit card numbers, driver’s license information, and license plate numbers, to a company with ties to foreign entities is an unacceptable risk," Van Drew wrote in a Feb. 5 letter to the NJTA.

Pennacchio also wrote to Gov. Phil Murphy, asking him to use his executive power to void the contract.

“This is especially concerning at a time when tensions between the United States and Chinese governments are at an all-time high,” he said in a statement.

And U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat representing the 5th District, also voiced his concerns about China "trying to steal Americans' data" in a social media post Feb. 7.

"We cannot allow our personal information and whereabouts to get into the hands of our number one adversary," he said.

TransCore has refuted that its parent company ST Engineering has any ties to the Chinese Communist Party, with president and CEO Whitt Hall saying as much in a letter sent to Van Drew on Feb. 11.

One of STE's shareholders, Temasek, is an investment holding company for the Singapore government. Conduent raised concerns about recently-departed Temasek Board of Directors member Fu Chengyu, the former chairman of China Petroleum and Chemical Corp.

Hall said Conduent is trying to "spread misinformation" about TransCore to prevent the NJTA from executing the contract, and said Temasek " has no role in STE’s business operations," but did not address concerns about Fu's involvement.

TransCore also has a National Security Agreement in place with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Treasury to ensure no data collected by their tolling system can fall into a foreign entity's hands, Hall said.

Conduent said the TransCore response did not address allegations about Fu, and "portrayed Temasek as merely one of many shareholders, rather than acknowledging it as the majority and controlling shareholder that consented to Singapore Technologies’ acquisition of TransCore."