Trailer for Sale or Rent, Rooms to Let, 50 Cents!

Last night, as I left my home in Bridgewater, headed for a special meeting of the Somerset County Park Commission, I suddenly found myself right in the middle of a wind-whipped mini-storm blowing tree-tops around at will, and flinging broken branches onto the roadway. It scared whatever was left of daylight right out of me.

Without warning, a small tree limb blew down and struck my auto’s windshield on the passenger side, where the glass meets the metal frame, shattering it into a spidery web pattern. That was the end of my planned excursion to 355 Milltown Road, where I wanted to hear the Park Commission’s presentation about its new housing policy. I turned around, drove back to my home and called my insurer, State Farm: The windshield is scheduled to be replaced Thursday afternoon. Things don’t always go as planned.

Luckily, as I have mentioned before in one of my blog posts, there are two local journalists, Martin C. Bricketto and Joe Tyrell, who would not think of not covering key proceedings of the Park Commission. You can read their reports in the Courier News and the Star-Ledger, online or in print.

Judging from what has been reported in the last few days, far too much time and salary dollars have been spent in studying the housing issue and in coming up with a lop-sided recommendation still largely out-of-whack with what people in the real world pay for housing. Last year’s investigative analysis by Wolff & Samson made it abundantly clear that housing for park employees was a major abuse of the public trust.

Presumably, the new housing policy is intended to correct that. Yet, the Golf Maintenance Director will continue to pay no rent for the Markota House, because that stipulation is reported to be in his contract. He earned $94,500 in 2007. Then why not re-negotiate the contract? Is it in the public interest to provide free housing?

And, if the Director is underpaid, then why not re-negotiate to increase his salary upwards, while charging fair market value for the housing? Additionally, as Joe Tyrell pointed out, the housing policy uses carefully crafted legalese which employs phrases that, “…are buzzwords in the tax world . . . by including them, the commission potentially reduces the taxable value of the homes as employee benefits.”

At least one of the rents now being charged is far more equitable than before: Parks Director, Ray Brown, was once paying $500, before voluntarily doubling it to $1,000 when the question first came to light. It has since been increased to $2,500.

But there isn’t any over-riding real-world perspective to the whole ball of wax. The best that can be said for it is that it was assembled to placate the public; possibly to try as much as possible to honor previous commitments made verbally or otherwise; and to come up with a rationale that would hold legally, especially with the IRS. To really understand why what was done, was done, the housing policy can be justified only by looking at it through a political prism. Forget the economics.

Have a good summer; thanks for reading.

Open Government & Closed Meetings

Boy, don’t I know about that! On Wednesday, October 03, 2007, Joe Tyrell of the Star-Ledger wrote about John Paff, a Franklin Township citizen who is concerned about how the Somerset County Park Commission is fudging its closed sessions.

Good for him. I firmly believe that many if not most elected and appointed deliberative public entities abuse the privilege extended to them under New Jersey’s Sunshine Law.

That statute explicitly states that an agenda has to be published with a 48-hour public notice, and that the subject of the closed session must be clearly stated. It also requires that complete minutes be kept and published. But public bodies get around this all the time, because the statute is not monitored and rarely enforced, giving the implied assumption that elected officials meeting in such a manner will be honest. Whew! What an assumption.

For example, if a public body goes behind closed doors to enter into labor contract negotiations, it might simply label the topic as “Negotiations” on its agenda. You won’t necessarily know with whom the negotiations are taking place, let alone the even more important aspects of the proposed deal, such as the initial offer being put on the table by the bargaining unit, or the counteroffer being offered by the public entity.

This is all under the guise that to progressively disclose such information would jeopardize the negotiations themselves and, therefore, an outcome favorable to the public. Of course, the outcome of such secret deliberations is almost always injurious to the public interest.

Since you don’t have the facts, you cannot, as an informed citizen, voice your opinion in public to the elected body. That would make it too uncomfortable for politicians who don’t want citizens running pass interference.

Another example occurs when a public body goes behind closed doors with its attorney: It may simple label the subject of the meeting as, “Attorney-Client Privilege.” Some privilege!

I don’t think that’s what the legislators had in mind when they enacted the Sunshine Law. Or was it?