We Will Not Be Those Who Forget the Past.
By Emory Layne
I’ve heard it too many times in this town for it not to send up warning flags:
“Why do you want to bring that up for?” someone will say. “That’s IN THE PAST.”
It drives me nuts. Invariably, when people who have been screwed try to ‘bring up the past,’ the people who did the screwing, or their cohorts, toss out this sentiment.
It’s over with … it’s done.
Which is exactly the sentiment you would expect from anyone who doesn’t want the cause-and-effect of whatever “it” was made clear. It reminds me a great deal of a legal system wherein some crook’s “rights” are violated if a jury finds out that he has been accused of doing the same thing he’s on trial for NOW a dozen times in the past. Only the guilty, it seems, want to live in a world of the moment, with no accountability for past actions.
Yes, North Plainfield is a “Faulkner Act” community, which, to quote the borough’s website, gives us a “strong mayor type of government.”
I, for one, don’t interpret that to mean that the mayor has dictatorial powers. I believe you can tell a lot about a person’s true character from how they use … or abuse … a situation of authority. Does anyone remember Alexander Haig, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, who, like a complete ass, got up in front of the world’s media in 1981 following the attempted assassination of the President and stated:
“Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State in that order, and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm to the Vice President, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House….”
Naturally, any schoolchild who knew the Constitution was aware that this was NOT the succession of authority; but it showed us a heck of a lot about the dangerous mentality of this man.
Let’s not overlook that, whether we are talking about national government or a small community, the ‘power’ held by individuals does not preclude their being abusive of it.
From an elected standpoint, we still don’t know how some of the current and past candidates were selected to be in the position to run for office. It boggles the mind that something as important as the way in which individuals are selected to run for office is viewed as either (a) something the VOTER has no right to know, or (b) something that is so unimportant as to be ignored despite repeated requests for clarification.
But some things we do know.
As noted in previous installments of this series, the way in which people are APPOINTED to important positions in town is far from being out in the open. There is no clear method of interviews, no clear delineation of qualifications. When there are multiple people seeking available positions, it can be sensibly concluded that friendship and partisanship count for more than commitment and experience. And if there are vacancies, why the mayor isn’t energetically trying to fill them is equally confusing.
Has she run out of friends?
At times, political opportunities and employment seem to be handled in a similar manner. For a small town, there are an annoying number of situations involving this person who’s an official in such-and-such position having his or her spouse hired to a paying position or appointed to an important one; this relative wheedles a spot on the ticket for a son, a father, a daughter, whatever. It’s just so hard to accept that with so many thousands of people living in town, ‘coincidentally,’ this person gets hired or appointed who ‘just happens’ to be connected to someone else.
I’m writing this dispatch, about people who want to ‘forget the past,’ to emphasize the point that IT DIDN’T GET THAT WAY LAST WEEK.
Such shenanigans are the result of a long-term culture of favoritism, corruption, and mutual back-scratching. Here in 2008, there are people who want me and others to “lay off” Mayor Allen because she’s “retiring.”
I beg to differ; I strongly believe she INSTITUTED the process this town has followed for over a decade.
And I further believe that as long as people who have merrily played along during that time continue to hold positions of authority (paid or ‘volunteer’), there will be no change whatsoever in this 21st century version of Tammany Hall.
Once again, it’s time to take a walk down memory lane.
In 1996, Janice Allen ran for mayor with a number of issues she deemed important. In her own words, “Taxes are the number one problem in town. We’re paying for things, but the services are not there.” Borough taxpayers are paying more for the expenses of the health and law departments than ever before, she said.
On January 1, 1997, the first day she officially held office, Allen submitted attorney Eric Bernstein’s name for appointment as Borough Attorney, claiming he would be paid “the same” as the former attorney, $115 an hour. As of 2008, we still have no accounting for the 1,739 hours Mr. Bernstein would have to work for the borough (the equivalent of 43 forty-hour work weeks per year) to explain the $200,000 a year he now makes.
Also in 1997, on the second day of Allen’s tenure, she dismissed then-Director of Health, Housing and Property A. Vincent Agovino, who held the position from July 1993 through January 1997 (coincidentally, the term of former GOP mayor Haggerty). Agovino contended that he was given no cause or forewarning for the dismissal, and had never been reprimanded or disciplined in any manner during his employment.
In 1997, Mayor Allen used a confusing statute in local law to name two people, Borough Administrator Judith Tiernan and Public Works Superintendent Les Martin, to 120-day ‘acting’ appointments. At the end of those 120 days, Allen hired John Katilas as Borough Administrator; information has begun to surface that Katilas was quite possibly recommended by the law firm Allen rushed to appoint on the first day of her administration. Not long after that, James Rodino was hired and eventually came to fill the position of Zoning Officer (vacated by the fired Agovino) and Public Works Director (vacated by the temporarily-retained Martin). To this day, Rodino holds these positions.
But there was still work to be done.
In 2002, Mayor Allen approached then property maintenance and zoning officer Allan Reading and offered him the chance to resign or be fired. His crime? He did exactly what Allen had professed she would commit to doing when running for mayor – energetically enforced property maintenance and illegal housing violations. Apparently, the purpose for those campaign claims had been served by getting the votes to win the election; subsequently, actual enforcement had become problematic. Some of those people, apparently, vote democrat. Oh, and Reading was not offered any severance. Mr. Reading earned $45,000 a year.
In that same year, though, Administrator Katilas entertained thoughts of taking a similar post in Rutherford, but Mayor Allen convinced him to remain with North Plainfield, earning $89,000 a year at the time.
Three years later, Mr. Katilas died suddenly, and, in the words of the Courier-News, “North Plainfield taxpayers (would have to) brace themselves for a possible tax hike this year to cover for a budgetary shortfall exceeding $520,000 that was discovered last month after the sudden death of the borough’s chief financial officer.”
For those of you who don’t speak politician, a “budgetary shortfall” means that there was money somewhere once, but it ain’t there anymore. If you had a “budgetary shortfall” in your checking account, it would likely be because someone in your family tapped the account through an ATM and didn’t tell you.
At least one borough employee, at the time, thinking he needed to play CYA, told residents that the Borough Administrator had been juggling funds among accounts for some time. This all seemed to be VERY serious business, especially for a mayor who had campaigned in part on a platform claiming severe financial mismanagement by the previous mayor.
But hey, guess what? It wasn’t so bad after all. Somehow, the apparent financial shenanigans of Katilas, the person hired by and energetically retained by Mayor Allen on the advice of Bernstein, the attorney hired by Allen at light speed, were pronounced as ‘not a problem’ by David Hollod, a long-time Somerville democrat power broker who was hired to join Allen, Bernstein, and the rest of the crew to look into the books and serve as the new Borough Administrator. Hollod and Bernstein also hold their positions to the present day.
Since then, we’ve had any number of poor decisions made by the administration.
But the CONSISTENCY has been the relatively small circle of people who participate. We see, from previous actions, that there seems to be no ordinance or law against asking for someone’s resignation without due cause – yet we also see that there has been nothing of the sort done SINCE the administration got the people it wanted into the positions it wanted them in.
There are, currently, people running for Council seats who have already been on the Council.
We would be wasting our breath asking them to do certain things if reelected, simply because they’re already there and aren’t doing those things.
Here’s something I ask of both candidates for mayor, Mr. Giordano and Mr. Gatto.
When elected, will you allow the NPCCR complete and total access to borough records, without the tap dance of having to submit requests and pay for copies, so that we can clear up some of the past questions? So that, if there is nothing there that’s untoward, we can then describe that to the residents? And so that, if there IS something there that’s questionable or criminal, we can pursue it as has been done in any number of other communities?
I don’t know what Mr. Gatto will do, because he has not yet had any opportunity.
I think, however, I can make an educated guess about Mr. Giordano. Since there has never been so much as a peep of opposition to any of the mayor’s decisions and actions since these people, including him, have obtained their positions, I’m hard pressed to find any optimism that things would suddenly change.
If everything at Borough Hall isn’t open for our perusal, we must draw the conclusion that some people don’t want it to be. And those people can’t be anyone except the same people who have been doing the same things for years. I, personally, have had my complete fill of that.
Unlike Mulder, I don’t want to believe. I want to see it with my own eyes.
North Plainfield Citizens for Community Rights 