newjerseynewsroom.com

BY JOE TYRRELL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

On Feb. 17, 2008, Thomas Palmentieri of Mays Landing filed an ethics complaint with the state Local Finance Board.

The Democrat was irate that Republican colleagues on the Hamilton Township Committee engineered the appointment of their campaign manager as municipal attorney for the Atlantic County community.

In his complaint, Palmentieri contended the lawyer, Randolph Lafferty, lacked the experience stipulated in the township's request for qualifications to applicants for the job.

Unsurprisingly, Lafferty also had contributed to his GOP slate.

A year and a day later, on Feb. 18, 2009, Palmentieri received a reply. He was told he had filed his complaint in the wrong place.

A form letter over the signature of Susan Jacobucci, board chairwoman and director of the state Division of Local Government Services, explained that, despite its title, the Local Finance Board does not have jurisdiction over local campaign finances. For that, the letter directed him to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission.

Based in the state Department of Community Affairs, the Local Finance Board is filled with political heavy-hitters.

There's Jamie Fox, who did stints as chief of staff for former Gov. James McGreevey and former Sen. Robert Torricelli before moving on to the Port Authority. Former Cherry Hill Mayor Susan Bass Levin was DCA commissioner before succeeding Fox at the Port Authority. Jane Kenny was also DCA commissioner and is vice president of former Gov. Christie Whitman's company. Republican Francis Blee of Absecon left the state Assembly after representing the Second District for 14 years. And so on.

Among other things, the board serves as the ethics commission for most counties and towns in the state. A handful have their own bodies to enforce the Local Government Ethics Law, but the board also hears appeals of their decisions.

If the board's roster is noticeably short on ethicists, that's because most of its time is not spent on penny-ante or $8,000-ante local appointments. The board regulates big-bucks financial issues for towns and counties, such as school bond refinancings or waiving budget caps, utility authority project or deferring pension costs or even taking over municipal spending, as in debt-ridden Hoboken.

Competing with these many important tasks, ethical issues aren't simply relegated to second banana status, they hardly make it into the bunch.

And so with Palmentieri's complaint, which falls into an ethical netherworld. It might be Republicans bending the rules to reward one of their own, but it might be Democratic sour grapes over losing a patronage appointment. Many complaints are political scrapes taken to another venue.

But it is easy to understand how even a municipal official might believe the LFB had jurisdiction in the matter. Even on the ELEC website, the page for "campaign finance and lobbying disclosure" refers visitors with questions about pay-to-play to the Treasury Department, or to Local Government Services at DCA, and helpfully includes the links.

Finally, there's the time it took to the LFB to tell Palmentieri to look elsewhere. It was not that he was singled out to get a run-around. A board staffer did promptly acknowledge receipt of his complaint, sending a letter to that effect on March 7, 2008.

A review of some recent LFB ethics cases, and the chart showing the overall status of complaints, shows it is not uncommon for months to pass before the board even simply notifies a complainant that it does not have jurisdiction.

Several pending complaints date back to 1999. Responding to a query about those cases from John Paff of Franklin Township, Marc Pfeiffer wrote that one was lost, another is missing and may never have existed, and a third was apparently withdrawn.

In response to a complaint about Bridgeton, the LFB subpoenaed minutes of the local zoning board and scheduled a hearing in May 2000, according to Pfeiffer, the DCA's custodian of public records. But "there was no response to the previous written requests for information or the subpoena and no follow-up from any party," he wrote.

The result? The board marked the case "administratively closed and it is not available for review," Pfeiffer said.

The LFB tabled action on two complaints involving Asbury Park officials after some were arrested, according to Pfeiffer. "The complainants did not follow-up to press the complaints once the litigation was resolved," so the board has never reactivated them, he said.

At times "when the Board was backlogged with cases, decisions were made to 'administratively close' older cases where complaint had not been in contact with the staff," according to Pfeiffer. While the LFB will not pursue these complaints, the files are "closed for public access as the cases have not been adjudicated by the Board," he said.

The status chart also showed a case pending from 2004, five from 2006 and more than a dozen from 2007, as well as most from 2008. But DCA spokeswoman Lisa Ryan said the numbers do not represent a backlog.

"Ethics complaints are handled in as timely a matter as possible," Ryan said. "Some take more time than others to resolve for a variety of reasons."

In 13 complaints the LFB acted on over the past 12 months, it dismissed or disclaimed jurisdiction in a dozen. The exception was a June 2007 complaint that Cape May Point Mayor Malcolm Fraser had voted to appoint his wife to the zoning board. The LFB fined him $100 in July 2008, after he had left office.

Even if the Local Finance Board had decided to take up Palmentieri's complaint, it is unlikely to have found reason to impose penalties under the law.

James Vogel of Beach Haven complained that in January 2007, Jerry Dasti, the personal attorney of Mayor Thomas Stewart, had been appointed municipal attorney with the mayor's vote.

In October 2008, Jacobucci wrote that "the circumstances do not warrant the conclusion that a professional or financial arrangement" that violated the law "existed between Mayor Stewart and Mr. Dasti."

But, she added, the LFB sent a reminder to the two men that they should be "mindful of their obligations," and avoid actions that "might be viewed by the public" as questionable.

Marshall Schmeizer and Lisa Hartman of Ocean City knew something was questionable when the perfectly legal expansion of their house was stopped by a sudden zoning change.

They knew some neighbors were upset by the project, but believed their councilman, Jody Alessandrine, had promised to "keep them in the loop" about any proposed changes. Instead, they would up in Superior Court, where a judge ruled in March 2008 that they had been the victims of "spot zoning."

Judge Valerie Armstrong said the zoning change "was enacted in a hasty and haphazard manner... to placate a group of vocal neighbors rather than promoting the general welfare."

Schmeizer and Hartman filed a complaint against Alessandrine with the city's local ethics board. But an odd thing happened.

Although he had testified in court that he had introduced the spot zoning ordinance and was its prime mover, the local board disregarded those statements. Instead, it asserted that under the Faulkner Act form of government, only the city "administration" could have introduced the ordinance.

Disregarding both the sworn testimony and Armstrong's findings of fact, the local board substituted different versions of the dealings between Schmeizer and Hartman and city officials. It cleared him of any violation.

Naturally, Schmeizer and Hartman appealed to the LFB.

Jacobucci replied that they had filed their appeal too soon, 10 days after the local board delivered its opinion, but before it released the document. Moreover, she said, when it did release the document, the local board did not include its "legal analysis."

As a result, "your appeal is not sufficient, in that the grounds for the appeal are to be tied to the underlying legal analysis," Jacobucci wrote on Oct. 30, 2008.

Finally, the local board released its reasoning, that it is "reasonable and usual that a politician would take positions" that gladden some constituents and offend others.

The LFB then took up the case.

In January, Jacobucci wrote to the complainants, telling them they had made "no demonstration" that Alessandrine violated the ethics ordinance.

Joe Tyrrell may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

RELATED STORY: