says information was
not provided properly
State records council
says information was
not provided properly
BY JOYCE BLAY
Staff Writer
LAKEWOOD — It isn’t the money, it’s the principle of the matter.
That is the reason Ray Coles said he and fellow Township Committee members intend to appeal the $1,000 fine handed down by the state Government Records Council on Oct. 9 against township clerk Bernadette Stankowski for failing to comply with a request for public information made by Lakewood resident Yehuda Shain within the requirements of state law.
"What the council did was wrong. Bernadette should never have been fined without a hearing," Coles said.
That was also the opinion of township attorney Steven Secare.
"This is not Iraq. The decision was outrageous," Secare said. "If you get a traffic ticket, you are entitled to a due process hearing. At the (Government Records Council meeting), she was fined $1,000 for willful misconduct, even though the board’s attorney advised them not to do that without due process hearing. That’s elemental law."
But not improper governmental procedure, said E.J. Miranda, a spokesman for the state Department of Community Affairs.
"The council considers the (attorney’s) legal advice in making its decisions, but can draw its own conclusions," said Miranda.
"They felt that the actions of the custodian (Stankowski) demonstrated a knowing and willful violation. This is the first such action of the council since it met for the first time in July 2002."
The Open Public Records Act (OPRA) provides that the fine is to be paid personally by the custodian of the public records, in this case the township clerk.
The council’s action was justified in the opinion of Shain, who said he waited five months for the information before anything was provided to him.
"The Township Committee voted unanimously to appeal this council’s decision to Superior Court," Shain said. "The fine was a total of $1,000.
The township authorized a blank check to the attorney to appeal the decision at a cost of thousands of dollars. Where’s the cost effectiveness of this? I think the time has come to go back to an in-house council and engineering department."
In fact, according to Shain, that was the reason in the first place that he said he had requested the bills and contract for township tax assessor attorney Scott Kenneally.
"Three years ago, the township had in-house attorneys and an in-house engineering department," said Shain.
"(In exchange) for political paybacks, they decided to give all their legal and engineering work to outside firms, which is costing the taxpayers an arm and a leg. Given the amount of new construction in town, the tax rate should have come down considerably, but it has not because of the exorbitant fees charged by outside firms. Taxpayers are being taken for a ride."
In order to prove his point, Shain, a state certified tax assessor, said he requested bills and Kenneally’s contract. He said that under OPRA guidelines, the township had to provide the requested bills and contracts upon request. Five months later, Shain said, he still has not received what he asked for.
"The township redacted some information from the tax assessor’s office," said Shain.
"Instead, they gave me a running tally of the bills which gives me absolutely no information. That’s why the Government Records Council did not go along with its attorney’s recommendation. They felt there was absolutely no basis for a hearing."
Shain said the council asked township officials to provide a receipt for the pages that had been copied for him in order to prove the pages had been produced earlier, and they could not show anything.
That was simply not the case, countered Committeeman Charles Cunliffe.
"The facts as presented to us support the fact that our clerk tried her best to fulfill his wishes," Cunliffe said.
"If anything was missing, all he had to do was ask. After the initial request, there was no follow-up by Mr. Shain."
As for Shain’s assertion that the township is paying more by contracting its legal and engineering work to outside firms, Cunliffe said that rather than costing Lakewood more money, the action was taken three years ago to save money.
In Cunliffe’s opinion, there was only one explanation for Shain’s motivation.
"I think Mr. Shain has an agenda," he said.
Agenda or not, Shain said there may be further action taken by the Government Records Council in the near future. He said he is still waiting for the redacted (blacked out) information to be provided to him in the format he requested. The other matter is unrelated, but is no less pressing a concern to him.
In a letter from the Lakewood tax assessor to Beth Medrash Govoha, a tax-exempt college in Lakewood, the academic institution was told to provide required information in order to receive tax-exempt status on six properties the college owns, according to Shain.
He said there was no response from the college in the file, but it still received tax-exempt status on the properties.
"It’s my position that somebody purged the response to the letter from that file or else somehow they got their status without having to comply with the request from the tax assessor’s office," he asserted.
Stankowski had little to say about the fine after being contacted by a reporter.
"I just felt it was unfair and my attorney, Guy Ryan, is going to make an appeal," she said.
When asked how she felt about taxpayer money being used to appeal a personal fine of $1,000, Stankowski declined comment.