Gray-Gorman website praises solar scam

Yesterday we lauded the first mailer sent out by the Freeholder campaign of David Gray and Kathleen Gorman.  We sincerely thought that their first piece of mailed campaign literature was well done.

Within an hour of our post praising their mailer, the Gray-Gorman camp sent out an email blast in which they lied by claiming to be Watchdog.  And for perhaps the tenth time, they used a false Pennsylvania address in an attempt to place the blame for their attacks on the shoulders of Senator Steve Oroho, who employs a consultant from the same town and state.

David Gray is a lawyer.  Gray is an officer of the Court and a candidate for public office.  We asked if this kind of false misrepresentation was really allowed by the New Jersey Bar Association and it was suggested to us that we file an ethics complaint.  Actually, we feel kind of sorry for David Gray.  Why does he need to lie and claim to be someone else? 

The Gray-Gorman email attacks Gail Phoebus and George Graham for refusing to support the bailout of the solar scam last year.  You remember that scam, don't you?  In February of last year, the Sparta Independent reported on the solar scam and asked these questions:

How did a solar power company that had only been in business for two years get loan guarantees of nearly $90 million from Sussex, Morris and Somerset counties?

And why would Sussex County, with a budget of about $100 million, put at risk $27.7 million through bond guarantees for a private company?

Sussex County Administrator John Eskilson says Sussex County is potentially facing $26 million in losses after SunLight General Capital, a solarpower energy company, was unable to pay back most of the $27.7 million in bonds the county took out for them through debt issued by the Morris County Municipal Authority.

The solar bailout that Gail Phoebus and George Graham voted against took another $10 million -- all of the "rainy day" money the county had put aside from the sale of the county's nursing home plus $3 million more -- and threw it at the failed solar project.  The three Freeholders who voted for the bailout -- Richard Vohden, Phil Crabb, and Dennis Mudrick -- are big supporters of Gray-Gorman and held a big fundraising event to fund the Gray-Gorman effort.

Now you might be asking why are Gray-Gorman attacking Gail Phoebus, who was elected to the state Assembly and isn't even a Freeholder anymore.  Gail Phoebus isn't even on the ballot this year, so why would Gray-Gorman waste the effort? 

Well, it is very clear that the Gray-Gorman campaign is being directed by the solar lobby and the vendors and lawyers responsible for the scam in the first place.  They will never forgive Mrs. Phoebus for standing up to them.  In the words of one solar watcher:  "They want her dead." 

Remember the Solar Proposal Evaluation Team that wrote the 2011 document used to sell the solar deal to the Sussex County Freeholders?  The Gray-Gorman email praised the members of this corrupt or incompetent team and criticized those who held them accountable.

Birdsall Services Group was a big part of the Solar Proposal Evaluation Team and the Group pleaded guilty in 2013, was fined $1 million and its assets sold in bankruptcy proceedings.  Birdsall's top executive recently got a prison sentence of 4 years, while another executive pleaded guilty late last month.  The Asbury Park Press reported:

BIRDSALL GOES TO PRISON FOR CORRUPTION

Toms River - Howard Birdsall, the former head of one of New Jersey's oldest and most prestigious engineering firms, was sentenced to four years in prison Friday in the pay-to-play corruption case that brought about the demise of the company that bore his family's name.

...Birdsall and six other of the firm's executives, as well as the firm itself, were indicted in 2013 on charges that they masked corporate campaign contributions as individual political donations in order to skirt the state's pay-to-play laws and get contracts it otherwise would have been disqualified from.

The evaluation team was put together by then County Administrator John Eskilson.  In 2015, Freeholders Richard Vohden, Phil Crabb, and Dennis Mudrick supported the bailout of the failed solar scheme.  These same freeholders later rewarded Eskilson with a position as a Trustee with the Sussex County Community College. 

Why are Gray-Gorman plainly aligning themselves with the solar scammers who raped Sussex County taxpayers for upwards of $40 million?  It is all about killing the county's investigation to put together a lawsuit to get our money back.  If the scammers can keep the money and plea bargain their way into paying a fine to resolve the criminal investigations, then they will come out ahead.

That's how these things often work out.  The fine is just a cost of doing business.  United States Senator Elizabeth Warren complained bitterly when HSBC Bank was caught laundering nearly a billion dollars in drug cartel money and ended up paying a fine with no prosecution.  Here is the Senator at a hearing discussing this subject:

Solar scam's Birdsall sentenced to 4 years

The 2011 document used to sell the solar deal to the Sussex County Freeholders was called the Solar Proposal Evaluation Report. It was the work of a committee that was formed to sell the solar scheme -- the Sussex County Evaluation Team.  Here are the members of the team:

- John Eskilson Sussex County Administrator

- Dennis McConnell, Sussex County Attorney

- Bernard Re, Sussex County Treasurer

- Steve Pearlman, a lawyer with Inglesino, Pearlman, Wyciskala & Taylor

- Deb Verderame, a lawyer with Inglesino, Pearlman, Wyciskala & Taylor

- Gerry Genna, Birdsall Services Group

- Tom Brys, Birdsall Services Group

- Douglas Bacher, NW Financial Group

- Heather Litzebauer, NW Financial Group

- Steven Gabel, Gabel Associates

- Richard Preiss, Gabel Associates

- Cadence Bowden, Gabel Associates

The evaluation team was put together by John Eskilson.  Two Birdsall cronies were on the team.  Freeholder Richard Vohden, Phil Crabb, and Dennis Mudrick supported the bailout of the failed solar scheme.  These same freeholders later rewarded Eskilson with a position as a trustee with the Sussex County Community College. 

The Asbury Park Press reported today:

BIRDSALL GOES TO PRISON FOR CORRUPTION

Toms River - Howard Birdsall, the former head of one of New Jersey's oldest and most prestigious engineering firms, was sentenced to four years in prison Friday in the pay-to-play corruption case that brought about the demise of the company that bore his family's name.

...Birdsall and six other of the firm's executives, as well as the firm itself, were indicted in 2013 on charges that they masked corporate campaign contributions as individual political donations in order to skirt the state's pay-to-play laws and get contracts it otherwise would have been disqualified from.

...Eatontown-based Birdsall Services Group pleaded guilty in the case in 2013, was fined $1 million and its assets sold in bankruptcy proceedings.

In other news from today...

Be careful with filling out those ethics disclosures. 

Lawrence Durr – longtime committeeman, mayor and planning board member in Chesterfield Township – pleaded guilty to a criminal charge that he filed fraudulent ethics disclosure forms that failed to disclose his financial relationship to a developer.  A state investigation revealed that Durr used his official positions to advance the developer’s plan to build a major residential and commercial project at a site in the township.

PolitickerNJ wrote:  "Never go anywhere in New Jersey and assess that the place might be different from any other familiar underbelly. . . Underneath the slick veneer of social respectability they actually occupy just one more den of inequity, or if you prefer the words of Obi Wan Kenobi, another 'wretched hive of scum and villainy'."

And the beat goes on...

The county freeholder who opposes democracy

Freeholder Richard Vohden never held public office before becoming the hand-picked candidate of county insiders in 2010.  He should never have survived the primary for freeholder, but for the steadfastness of his very honorable running mate, who both underwrote the campaign and took considerable damage on Vohden's behalf. 

Without the guidance of that running mate, Vohden fell under the influence of two of the county's most accomplished operators -- Freeholder Richard Zeoli and County Administrator John Eskilson.  With Vohden's running mate gone, Zeoli became the "big man" on the Freeholder Board.  As a county employee, Eskilson had always worked for the Freeholders, but with Zeoli, they formed a partnership.  Zeoli's wife found employment at Eskilson's wife's company.  They began making deals, one of which -- the solar deal -- haunts Sussex County to this day. 

After Zeoli moved to Philadelphia and decided it was too far a commute to run for re-election, Eskilson found that he could convince those remaining board members to let him run the show.  Gone were the days of Freeholders like Oroho,  Wirths, Chiusano, Parrott, Vetrano, and Zellman.  In Vohden, John Eskilson found someone who not only would believe his bullshit, he would preach it.  And to this day, he does.

Reporter Vera Olinski of the Advertiser News ran a story on March 21, 2016, that covered the recent meeting of the Freeholder Board at which, and we quote:

"Freeholder Richard A. Vohden read portions of the administrative code aloud to the board. Vohden said he wanted the administrator to do his job and for freeholders to only be liaisons, including on the Engineering Committee."

It appears that Vohden mistakes the administrative code for the State Constitution.  Heck, he mistakes it for the Constitution of the United States of America. 

Vohden, who has no legal background that we are aware of, fails to understand that the Freeholder Board is the Legislative AND Executive branch for Sussex County.  It is the same in most counties although, in a few, they have decided to have an ELECTED County Executive.  In those counties, the Freeholder Board is the Legislative branch only. 

In no county -- anywhere in America -- is an UNELECTED BUREAUCRAT the Executive and Legislative branches of government, with the elected members merely serving as his "liaisons" to various parts of the bureaucracy.  That's just undemocratic -- and it is also deeply authoritarian.  It is the philosophical redux of the Fuhrer Principle. 

"The Führerprinzip was not invented by the Nazis. Hermann Graf Keyserling, an ethnically German philosopher from Estonia, was the first to use the term Führerprinzip. One of Keyserling's central claims was that certain 'gifted individuals' were 'born to rule' on the basis of Social Darwinism.

The ideology of the Führerprinzip sees each organization as a hierarchy of leaders, where every leader (Führer, in German) has absolute responsibility in his own area, demands absolute obedience from those below him and answers only to his superiors. This required obedience and loyalty even over concerns of right and wrong.

...This principle became the law of the National Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazi Party) and the SS and was later transferred to the whole German society once the Nazis took power. Appointed mayors replaced elected local governments. Schools lost elected parents' councils and faculty advisory boards, with all authority being put in the headmaster's hands.  The Nazis suppressed associations and unions with elected leaders, putting in their place mandatory associations with appointed leaders.

In practice, the selection of unsuitable candidates often led to micromanagement and commonly to an inability to formulate coherent policy... Rules tended to become oral rather than written."

(Wikipedia)

With Vohden and at least seven others having announced or considering a run for the two freeholder seats up this year, a discussion on how each of them view the governing relationship between the elected Freeholder Board and the appointed county bureaucracy is important.  We will be reaching out to each candidate to get their thoughts.

And while we are at it, we would like to urge two advocates of reform not on that list of seven to consider adding their voices to this election:  Independent Harvey Roseff and Democrat Bill Weightman.  Both would elevate the level of discourse and add to the debate.

Freeholders Zeoli, Crabb, and Vohden with then County Counsel McConnell

"Back Room" Vohden

Beware the misinformation.  Freeholder Richard Vohden is trying to call the decision to investigate the bailout of the Sussex solar scam a "backroom deal".

This is the same Freeholder Vohden who for the last five years has supported every backroom deal hatched by Rich Zeoli or Phil Crabb or John Eskilson.  Case in point -- the decision in January 2013 to allow the then County Attorney to go from being an outside vendor to being a full-time county employee with benefits, just in time for him to get a nice pension bump that the taxpayers will pay for the rest of his natural life.

Who got advance warning of that deal when it popped up on the first day of business of the new Freeholder Board?  Who got to debate the merits of that scam?  In fact, a bullying Freeholder Vohden explained that it was not job of elected Freeholders to question the contracts put before them by County Executive "Boss" Eskilson, it was only their job to ratify them.

Beware the misinformation.  The entire Solar scam was a series of backroom deals notable for their extreme lack of transparency.  And for the five years that Vohden and his ideological storm troopers have controlled the Freeholder Board with shouts of "Boss Eskilson uber alles" they consistently shouted down any attempt at reform or open government.

The "shrunken heads" are attempting to blame the Sussex County Republican Committee headed by Chairman Jerry Scanlan and State Senator Steve Oroho (R-24).  This is a calculated lie and an attempt at misdirection.  

They should know that it was Morris County Republican politicians who came into Sussex County and who sold the solar scam to gullible Sussex County.  Beware the misinformation.

Vohden feeling the heat on solar investigation

Freeholder Richard Vohden loves to tell stories about his days in construction as a union operator.  If Vohden's colorful stories are to be believed, then he should know full well that law enforcement NEVER comments on active investigations.

At last evening's meeting of the Freeholder Board, Vohden suggested that the Freeholders hold off commissioning any independent county investigation into the Sussex solar scam that ripped-off county taxpayers for millions, until after the status of possible state and federal criminal investigations is determined.  That means holding off on a county investigation indefinitely.

Vohden is being dishonest and he knows it.  He told the Freeholder Board that he made a round of telephone calls to the state and federal law enforcement agencies and understands from those calls that some kind of action is underway.  What he is trying to prevent is an independent county investigation.

The reason Sussex County needs a county investigation is simple.  The solar scam cost $88 million.  Sussex taxpayers are on the hook for $24 million and they just borrowed another $7 million and the bill for that is coming due shortly.  It will likely cause a sharp increase in property taxes. 

It is not the job of these law enforcement agencies to protect the interests of Sussex County.  They could even cite Sussex County officials for malfeasance and who would pay for that? The federal authorities will try to claw back the federal money involved in the scam.  Who is looking out for Sussex County taxpayers? 

That's where an independent county investigation comes in.  It is a fact-finding mission to build a case to get some of those millions back through civil action. 

The FBI and State Attorney General's office are looking for criminal indictments.  That may punish those responsible, but it won't get our money back.  That is why the investment in an independent county investigation is money well spent.

Freeholder Vohden appears to be arguing that we simply accept the screwing, pay the money, don't ask questions, keep paying the money, and do nothing to get our money back.  That is a weak, panty-waist approach in our opinion. 

Freeholders Richard Vohden and Phil Crabb voted for the solar bail out with taxpayers' money with no intention of ever trying to find out if the Wall Street manipulators, lawyers, and consultants did something wrong.  No attempt to recover a dime of the millions wasted.  They are part of the mess and bear some responsibility for where we are today.  Freeholders George Graham, Jonathan Rose, and Carl Lazzaro opposed the bailout and campaigned with the PROMISE that there would be an independent county investigation.

Back before the June 2015 primary, even Vohden claimed to support an independent investigation because back then he was trying to deny the existence of state and federal criminal investigations.  Why the flip-flop Richie? 

It is important for the Freeholders who campaigned on the PROMISE of an independent county investigation to keep that PROMISE.  Voters are already skeptical of elected officials.  Don't give them a reason to believe the worst of politicians.

Update on Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 12:15PM by Sussex County Watchdog

Simple proof as to why Freeholder Vohden is either stone cold stupid or trying to obstruct an investigation.  Go to the FBI website (www.FBI.gov) and you will find this list of elementary-school level basic information from the FBI for dealing with the FBI:

Search Tips

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• If you are looking for information about yourself or a case you are involved in, you must submit a Privacy Act request.

• The FBI does not comment on all current, ongoing cases. See our field press releases for public information on our investigations.

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