Entries in Sussex County Counsel Dennis McConnell (3)

Sunday
Apr122015

Crabb cover-up: 1800 words, Evaluation Report not mentioned

Giving unprecedented access to its pages, the New Jersey Herald permitted Freeholder Director Phil Crabb to pen an 1,800 word apology in today's edition that presents itself as an explanation of the solar mess, while it slyly attempts to blame Parker Space. 

So let's see, you have a lawyer, a bureaucrat, an accountant, a talk show host, a pharmaceutical salesman, and a union boss... and they want us to believe that the farmer did it.  Really?

Space was one of the Freeholders who voted for the concept in 2011.  He was an Assemblyman when the project went bad and required a taxpayer-funded bailout.  Space opposed the bailout and joined Freeholders Phoebus and Graham in asking the state Attorney General to initiate an investigation.  That investigation has begun.

As reported in the Herald, the Star-Ledger, the Advertiser, and Sparta Independent, the Express-Times and other media, a document called the Solar Proposal Evaluation Report  was  the sales document used to convince the Sussex County Freeholders that the solar plan was viable.   

Why then -- in his 1,800 word statement in the Herald -- didn't Freeholder Crabb mention the Solar Proposal Evaluation Report even once?

Because Crabb is trying to mislead the Herald's readers.  Because Crabb is attempting to protect the guilty.

Here is what really happened:

How it was sold to the Freeholders

In 2011, the Sussex County Board of Chosen Freeholder was composed of the following members:  Freeholder Director Rich Zeoli, Deputy Director Sue Zellman, and Freeholder members Phil Crabb, Rich Vohden, and Parker Space.  Vohden and Space were new to the  Board.  On November 14, 2011, the Freeholder Board voted unanimously to take the solar deal offered by SunLight  General.  How did it happen? 

Watchdog has uncovered the document used to sell the deal to the Freeholders, but first, let's look at the committee that was formed to sell the solar scheme.  It was called the Sussex County Evaluation Team and it was composed of the following people/organizations:

- 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

This is the committee that recommended to the Freeholder Board that they agree to the solar scheme.  These are the promises they made to the Board: 

"The SunLight/MasTec team possesses high quality management, installation capabilities, and sound solar development experience.  In addition, the SunLight/MasTec proposal provides Sussex benefits in the following key areas:

- It provides substantial direct energy cost savings;

- It provides the Local Units the potential for additional savings through the sharing of revenues from the sale of Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SRECs) and other environmental benefits;

- Due to SunLight/MasTec's proposed capital investment, which reduces the required size of the Authority bonds, it provides a strong level of protection for Sussex from financial risk;

- It provided additional financial protection for Sussex in the form of a debt service reserve fund; and,

- It includes a restoration security providing for additional Local Unit protection at the end of contract."

The entire process was open to public bid, but only one bidder showed up.  Another showed up late and was disqualified.  Some wanted to redo the bid, but that suggestion was brushed aside.  Only one bidder?

The Aftermath

While Sussex County continues to pay these lobbyists and consultants, neighboring Morris County has taken action. 

Lawyer Pearlman and his firm were asked to resign by Morris County and they complied.  Gabel Associates was also asked to resign and complied.  That is 5 of 12 members of the Sussex County Evaluation Team .

In 2013, Birdsall Services Group pleaded guilty to charges of public corruption  and was ordered to pay $1m in penalties, as well as $2.6 million to settle a civil forfeiture action brought by the attorney general’s office.  Individual cases against seven executives are pending. 

That makes 7 of the 12 members of the Sussex County Evaluation Team.

But while they have suffered sanctions from Morris County or from the New Jersey Attorney General, Sussex County Freeholder Director Phil Crabb continues to be more than happy to do business with these people.

Maybe Sussex County taxpayers should think about recalling some of these Freeholders who continue to do business with the people who ripped off Sussex County?

Watchdog is read by 11,000 residents in Sussex County, either by email or online.  Let us hear from you.  Tell us what you think we should do...

Do you want your tax dollars to continue to pay the Sussex County Evaluation Team members who have been fired by Morris County or who have pled guilty to actions brought by the New Jersey Attorney General?

Let us know:  info@sussexcountywatchdog.com

Sunday
Mar292015

Will Phil Crabb be the John Dean of the solar scandal?

Legendary Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein was in Sussex County this week and the timing couldn't have been better.  Sussex County residents are getting an inside look at how their government is run as a scandal unfolds involving a solar energy project sold by county bureaucrats as a sure thing, a failed corporation concocted by a group of Wall Street bankers, and a bailout that endangers more taxpayers money in a process gone bad.

And what Sussex taxpayers are finding out is that the county government they pay for isn't being run by the people they elected to run it. 

While elected Freeholders come and go, real power in the county is wielded by a couple professional bureaucrats who have occupied positions of power for decades.  County Attorney Dennis McConnell has held his position for over 25 years, while County Administrator John Eskilson joined the County in 2002 --coming from Hardyston Township, where he took over as administrator ten years earlier, when Wendy Molner was mayor.

Eskilson and McConnell are masters at always keeping control of three of the Freeholder Board's five votes.  They do so in a number of ways.  For instance, when Freeholder Rich Zeoli's wife needed a job, she was accommodated at the company where Eskilson's wife was Director of Business Development, ThorLabs.

The pair of bureaucrats prey on incoming freeholders whose minds are open to suggestion.  Often unsure of the job and insecure,  the bureaucrats school them on the ways of county government.  And so you get a Freeholder like Richard Vohden, who will tell you that he believes his role is to "ratify" whatever the county bureaucrats decide.  Seriously, he actually believes this.

The two bureaucrats operate like rogue managers at a corporation whose Board of Directors has become enfeebled and unable to exercise authority.  Every mistake -- from the AmeriPay scandal to the near theft of the county dump -- is brushed over lest the shareholders, the taxpayers, get up in arms.  "Don't look back, look forward" is what they say.

They control information and communications.  That was why Eskilson talked then Freeholder Director Vohden into giving him the job of Clerk of the Freeholder Board -- in addition to County Administrator.   A very unusual arrangement, but it leaves the Board with no independent staff.  It is like turning over your corporate governance committee to the CEO and it is why an official letter from county freeholders goes out to municipal governments without it even being discussed by the Board.

It is why county freeholders are forced to hire their own attorneys for honest representation and forced to use the state's Open Public Records Act to obtain basic information from the county that should be made available to them by the people who ostensibly work for them.  But if anything is clear, these two bureaucrats don't work for the elected representatives of the people, they work for themselves.  And they have made a pretty penny doing so.

Now Eskilson is in an open policy battle with some of the people he is supposed to work for, pushing his agenda and undermining the initiatives of his elected bosses.  He's even gone so far as to push his policy preferences with the political campaigns of candidates for freeholder.  None of this is very ethical, so far as his profession is concerned.  It undermines who they are, their status, and the protections generally afforded them. 

If Eskilson wants legitimate political power he has the opportunity to run for elected office.  That way the voters get to decide.  And if he wants to transform his office into that of an elected County Executive, he probably has the votes on the Freeholder Board to accomplish that, but again, the voters will have the final word and John Eskilson seems to want to avoid that.

Which brings us to Freeholder Director Phil Crabb.  Like John Dean, "the master manipulator of Watergate," Freeholder Crabb has played the role of chief explainer and apologist for the Sussex solar scandal.  Frequently incorrect in his facts, flip-flopping on tactics, always fudging what he "meant" to say.  First Crabb was for public disclosure in advance of voting on the settlement, then he was against it.  At various times he supported and then opposed reviews of what went wrong.  Then he was for public meetings to explain the solar settlement, and then he opposed them.  The word "flannel mouth" comes to mind.

Crabb's latest tactic is to make the claim to the media that (1) people don't care about the scandal; (2) there is a "backlash" against those who do care; and (3) that if you do care about a failed project and a bailout that is costing taxpayers $26 million it is all because of "politics". 

Crabb sounds remarkably like John Dean in the early days of Watergate.  That's because people like Crabb always forget that the public is busy trying to earn a living to feed the kids, keep a roof over their heads, and pay the property taxes screw-ups like Crabb stick them with.  But they aren't stupid, as Crabb seems to think.  They notice.  It takes time, genuine public outrage is usually a slow burn, but burn it does.  And when it does, watch out.

Anyway, Crabb doesn't have any data to back up his claims, he just pulls these things out of his butt.  It is the way of a man who has been very lucky in politics.  In the aftermath of Steve Oroho's hard-fought victory over Guy Gregg, Crabb was handed Gary Chiusano's Freeholder seat -- the seat Gary had to take from an incumbent.  Then he screwed up, didn't file his campaign finance reports for four years -- while he raised and spent money on stuff for someone -- and almost got asked to step down.  Rich Zeoli went to NJELEC and pleaded on his behalf and Crabb got caught up.  He was lucky in not being fined last year when he was up for re-election but those fines are coming. 

If not for the intervention of Steve Lonegan with a negative attack on opponent Dennis Mudrick, Crabb would have lost his 2011 re-election bid.  Last year, Crabb spent a lot of money against someone who didn't campaign at all, but still only won 60-40.  That was largely due to Crabb not having done a poll and not knowing that the issue he based his campaign on, the sale of the Homestead nursing home, isn't very popular with voters in Sussex County. 

Once again sans data, Crabb's  current performance is especially weak.  "All will be well..."


Thursday
Mar262015

Is there a case against Dennis McConnell?

Well, for one thing, he's been at the public trough for a very long time.  He's pushing three decades of pocketing taxpayers' money and his law firm has made millions.  And that isn't the only thing.  A few years ago he talked the Freeholders into making him an employee -- ostensibly to save money -- but that also put him in line for a very nice pension.

Quoting County Administrator John Eskilson, the Sparta Independent and the Advertiser News report that McConnell receives a salary of $195,649 plus benefits.  His law firm, according to Eskilson, receives an additional $88,358 from the county "on litigation matters".

According to the Asbury Park Press, which keeps a record of these things, Dennis McConnell's base salary is $189,256 per year and he is enrolled in the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS).   You can calculate what he will continue to receive from the taxpayers by visiting the state webpage below:

http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensions/estimate-pers.shtml

None of this should surprise anyone.  In every county in New Jersey, whether run by Republicans or Democrats, there is always a cabal who takes care of each other on the taxpayers' dime.  We would like to see a little more turnover, a new set of eyes once in a while, but it is what it is.

The problem with Dennis McConnell is that he's been making a lot of eyebrow raising calls for a very long time.  Let's pick a random year -- 1989 for example -- and see what Sussex County Counsel Dennis McConnell was up to way back then.

In 1989, George Bush Sr. was America's brand new President.  Matt Damon was eligible to vote for the first time.  The Soviet Union still existed.  Barack Obama was a student at Harvard Law School.  Less than 15% of American households had a personal computer.  And 3 million people in the U.S. owned a cell phone (today it is more than 300 million) and they weighed a couple pounds.  Oh yeah, Sussex County had the same legal counsel it has today.

In 1989, County Counsel Dennis McConnell told the Freeholder Board that the taxpayers had to eat a $648,078 loan the county had made to another agency because apparently the professionals at the county had forgotten about it.  The Board, led by Freeholder Vic Marotta, said no way.  Marotta noted that, with interest, the agency owed the county $2 million, and he wanted to collect.

In 1989, the Star-Ledger and the Herald reported that county officials had met with a Democrat candidate for Sheriff who was also a county employee.  One of those officials was the County Counsel, Dennis McConnell.  They advised this candidate that he no longer had a job.  That led to the indictment of another one of those officials, the incumbent Sheriff at the time.  He was charged with exercising improper influence for threatening to fire the county employee if he ran for sheriff, and was accused of "official misconduct, criminal coercion and threats and other improper influence in official and political matters in a three-count indictment handed up by a state grand jury in Trenton."

The New Jersey Attorney General said that the county employee's "constitutional right to run for public office" was threatened, adding that "any attempt to thwart or undermine an election or political candidacy is a grievous offense against the state."

And again in 1989, County Counsel Dennis McConnell advised the Freeholder Board to invalidate the employment contract of 68 county workers simply because the county agency that had negotiated the contract had been merged into another department during a restructuring of county government.

Pick any year and you will find a lot of head-scratchers like these.

We believe that the case against lawyer Dennis McConnell rests on his support for and justification of a "non-disparagement" clause, a gag-order really, as part of the "settlement" agreement Sussex County negotiated in order to borrow more taxpayers' money to bail out the failed solar project.  The Herald described it this way:  "Under the settlement's non-disparagement clause, the county freeholders are barred from voicing public criticisms of the professionals, consultants and other entities that were involved in the original solar project and in the recently concluded settlement negotiations."

And McConnell is quoted by the Herald as clearly defending the public gagging of everyone in the know, calling the non-disparagement clause "a material part of that binding agreement approved by them (the Freeholders) in their official capacities for the benefit of the citizens of Sussex County."

We believe that any lawyer who supports and justifies such a thing simply doesn't understand or respect the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of these United States.  We're sorry, but to us it borders on being un-American.

It is bad enough that money has corrupted the political system and has molded the politicians of both parties into pawns of special interests.  It is bad enough that Wall Street can wreck the American economy and then keep their bonuses with bail out money from working taxpayers.  It is bad enough that banks can do whatever they want to do -- from illegal foreclosures to laundering the money of drug cartels -- and never go to jail for it. 

But to try to set a precedent on behalf of a group of scumbag Wall Street operators like SunLight General -- to try to tell the people and their elected officials that they cannot even complain about it -- that simply goes too far.  It's like something some Fascist would think up.

And for that reason we think that the County Counsel should do the honorable thing and resign.