The Definition of Insanity

By Sam Adams

No, it's not what you think, because in Sussex it takes on a whole new meaning. 

Here we have a solar program that has gone bad and cost us millions. But to add insult to injury, we are sold a bill of goods by the freeholder board, that they will investigate where the money went.  Except for some of them on the board its more about politics than getting your money, why? 

    You don’t hire someone with more conflicts than James Comey to do the investigation, and that’s what Matthew Boxer has.  He worked as someone who would have a hand in the review process for the State when he worked there before he returned to the private sector law firm that conducted this so-called investigation into the same deal he had to approve. 

    But at a recent Tea Party meeting, that’s what Freeholder Rose hung his hat on. The fact that they had a pile of documents to wade through that could be used for litigation to get back your money. That investigation cost you almost $518,000, by the way.   

     Remember when I said you don’t hire the guy that signed off on a deal to investigate it?  Yeah, how’s that going to work out?  About as well as a screen door on a submarine. Get your snorkel, it’s getting deep. 

    In no way will anything be uncovered that is incriminating by Mr. Boxer because to do so would be an implication to the fact he was incompetent when he did the initial review. So, Freeholder Rose is selling you a whopper with no beef, there are no documents. Freeholders Rose and Graham know that.   

     But queue up the twilight zone music folks, to add to the insanity, the democrat in sheep's clothing John McCann, gets an endorsement from Freeholder Rose. 

   Now, who is suing Freeholders Rose, Lazzaro, and Graham?   Sheriff Strada.  He is doing so because he is the constitutionally elected law enforcement in the county, he requires his budgetary needs to be met, and the Freeholders have been fighting him on this, why?  Probably politics.  Strada’s budgets have always been reasonable, and significantly less than they could have been.   But here is where it gets insane, did Freeholder Rose endorse McCann in the hope that in some way he could get out of the lawsuit??  Because McCann was legal counsel to the Sheriff's association when he worked with Sheriff Saudino in Bergen County, a Hillary supporter, and democrat himself, as well.  And as a result of that connection, he may have made a promise to Freeholder Rose that he could pull something off.  Make it all go away for Freeholder Rose. After all, McCann has as many endorsements as Charles Manson and needs any he can get. 

     I don’t see Sheriff Strada caving on the lawsuit, the sheriff’s department needs to be funded.

 This is nothing more than a very, very desperate move by both McCann, and Freeholder Rose to try to save each other.  The voters of Sussex county are smarter than that.

Why is Rose using Morris operative to attack Fantasia?

Attendees at last evening's Skylands Tea Party meeting were shocked by the language used by supporters of Freeholder Jonathan Rose against one of his rivals for the GOP nomination, Dawn Fantasia.  Rose, a single man, is running against Fantasia, a single mom with three children.  Both are Republicans. 

In advance of his appearance before the Tea Party, Rose had evidently asked supporters to attend.  This is a standard practice, but how those attendees behaved is not.  One Rose supporter loudly suggested that Mrs. Fantasia be "placed in a cage" -- for what purpose was unclear.  But clearly the intent was to create a threatening situation so that Mrs. Fantasia would be bullied into not speaking.

Through it all, Freeholder Rose's running mate, Freeholder Carl Lazzaro, was a gentleman, calling for restraint.  One would have expected Jonathan to have pitched-in to help.

The ring leader of the attack on Freeholder candidate Dawn Fantasia appears to have been a relative of a political operative from Morris County, who is also running for Freeholder in that county.  With memories of the last time Morris County involved itself in Sussex County's affairs -- and the resulting solar fiasco -- still fresh, we wonder how well this action was thought through. 

Sheriff Mike Strada was the target of some particularly nasty attacks.  Strada, is suing the Freeholder Board and those three named Freeholders -- Graham, Rose, and Lazzaro -- for wasting taxpayers' money and interfering in the operations of his department for political ends. 

Some supporters of congressional candidate John McCann were in attendance and apparently were part of an attempt to spread the lie about Sheriff Strada that he was not in opposition to Democrat Governor Phil Murphy's attempts to impose Sanctuary State status on New Jersey's 21 counties.  In fact, Sheriff Strada is a law enforcement leader in opposing Governor Murphy and his Sanctuary movement, going so far as to let the Governor know, in writing, that the Sussex County Sheriff's office will not comply with the liberal state and will work with the Trump administration in enforcing federal law.

We thank the Skyland's Tea Party leadership for addressing this falsehood at last evening's meeting and making it right.  

We trust that this will put these rumors to an end.

After three years, Freeholders talk transparency.

847 days into their term of office and the two incumbent Freeholders up for re-election this year finally decided to talk about transparency and ways to make Sussex County government more open.  As usual, Freeholder Jonathan Rose was more enthusiastic about the prospect than was running mate, Carl Lazzaro.  You can hear the discussion here, at the 59:00 minutes point...

It is no secret that Sussex County is run by a small group of insiders and that these insiders are not necessarily elected officials.  The county administrator is one of the most powerful public officials in the county and he's not elected.  There are well-connected people who influence county government through an unregulated practice known as  "county lobbying".   These county lobbyists are both powerful and unelected.

Sussex County doesn't have a County Ethics Board where citizens can come forward to challenge an apparent conflict of interest or other case of wrongdoing. 

The county uses the personal financial disclosure statement provided for by state law.  It is weak and almost meaningless.  But there is nothing preventing the establishment of a more in depth reporting process. 

It is technologically possible to have near total transparency so that the property tax money we spend can be scrutinized by the people the county takes it from -- the taxpayers.  Every contract could be posted on line and proposals for new debt could be posted and debated on-line and then put before the voters for approval.  After all, it is their debt and they will have to pay it.

Now that the Freeholder Board is talking about transparency-- we say better late than never.  Perhaps you would like to join in?  Send your comments and ideas to Watchdog at info@sussexcountywatchdog.com.

Why did Freeholder Lazzaro fail to file his NJELEC reports on time?

The lack of transparency is a big problem with the Sussex County Freeholder Board.  Freeholders Jonathan Rose and Carl Lazzaro campaigned on a platform of open government and a promise to govern transparently but have done anything but.  No-bid contracts negotiated and handed out without the knowledge of the Board.  And backroom dealing is so commonplace that county insiders knew Jonathan Rose was the next Freeholder director before he did.  Before the vote was taken, it had been published in the Freeholder agenda. 

This even filters down into the conduct of the campaign.  While Jonathan Rose has been diligent in filing his campaign finance and expense reports with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (NJELEC), running mate Carl Lazzaro missed a year's worth of filing deadlines and only recently filed them all at once.

 

Perhaps this was in response to the trouble Freeholder boss George Graham got himself into by running afoul of NJELEC?  You can read the New Jersey Herald's report here: 

Freeholder hit with election commission complaint

The New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission has filed a five-count complaint against Sussex County Freeholder George Graham for allegedly failing to comply with state law regarding campaign contributions during the 2013 election season...

http://www.njherald.com/20180304/freeholder-hit-with-election-commission-complaint#//

Disappointed in the guys running the Freeholder Board

In 2015, the New Jersey Herald supported the election of two local mayors -- Jonathan Rose and Carl Lazzaro -- to the Freeholder Board.  They beat an incumbent Freeholder and his running mate.

On election night, the defeated incumbent said:  "(My running mate) and I didn't only have two individual opponents, we also had the New Jersey Herald as an opponent." 

That's true, along with many regular Republicans who looked at the solar project as a scam and a taxpayer rip-off.  For these reasons, Watchdog also supported Rose and Lazzaro. 

The Herald called the failed solar project "far and away the biggest issue of the campaign."  Rose and Lazzaro were elected on the promise of either making the solar project run efficiently or getting our money back.  

But after getting elected, they formed a Freeholder Board majority with incumbent George Graham that left millions worth of valuable solar panels and equipment unused and rotting away in a warehouse.  

Instead of taking legal advice to go after the bond attorney whose responsibility it was to protect Sussex County taxpayers -- they re-hired him and accepted a large campaign contribution from him. 

They spent more than $500,000 to "study" the problem -- by giving a no-bid contract to the same lawyer whose office had approved the solar project in the first place.  That's right, his office was the taxpayers' last line of defense -- but said "do it" anyway.  Why was hehanded the contract to figure out what had gone wrong? 

Rose and Lazarro praised that report -- which never once mentioned the failure by the bond attorney or the lawyer who wrote the report -- but cost taxpayers $8,064 per page and is all but useless in pursuing a case to claw back some of the millions lost by Sussex County property taxpayers. 

The solar fiasco happened because there were no taxpayer controls over borrowing.  So when a Republican candidate for Freeholder named Herb Yardley suggested that Sussex County adopt the same ordinance that Warren County uses to curb debt -- that no new borrowing occur without the approval of the voters -- you would've expected the majority on the Freeholder Board to support him. 

But that's not what happened.  Freeholders Graham and Lazarro came out in opposition to taxpayer control over borrowing -- leaving the door wide open to future solar-type scams.  To make matters worse, these Freeholders refused to support fellow Republican Yardley because he was in favor of this conservative, common sense proposal.  

Warren County is cutting property taxes because of this reform, while in Sussex County property taxes continue to go up.  But these Sussex Freeholders actually opposed giving property taxpayers controls over debt so much that they would have rather seen a liberal Democrat win than elect a conservative Republican who supports such a reform measure.

Then there's the Freeholders' recent vote to borrow to spend millions more on new buildings for the county community college at a time when community college enrollment is shrinking by 8,000 hours a year and county population is in decline.  It makes no sense -- and the voters had no voice to stop it. 

Why?  It all comes back to transparency and open government.  Rose and Lazarro campaigned on being transparent but have been anything but.  No-bid contracts negotiated and handed out without the knowledge of the Board.  And backroom dealing is so commonplace that county insiders knew Jonathan Rose was the next Freeholder director before he did.  Before the vote was taken, it had been published in the Freeholder agenda.  

If Rose and Lazarro want to be re-elected, they are going to need to explain how the next three years will be different from the last three.  They will need to own up to past mistakes and set out an agenda to correct them.

Stay tuned...