PACKET EDITORIAL, May 19
By: Packet Editorial
We’re not lawyers, so we’re not about to venture into the legal thicket surrounding the closed-door interviews of candidates to fill a vacancy on the West Windsor Township Council.
In fact, we’re told by lawyers familiar with New Jersey’s Open Public Meetings Act, better known as the Sunshine Law, that council members probably have the authority to conduct these interviews in executive session as long as that’s all they do. If they do anything beyond asking questions of the candidates and dutifully listening to the answers if one council member so much as ventures an offhand opinion about one of the candidates between interviews, or otherwise deviates in any way from the stated agenda and purpose of the meeting it will be a violation of the law.
So let’s assume, because they are honorable people, that the three members of the West Windsor Township Council who are conducting these interviews Charlie Morgan, Linda Geevers and Heidi Kleinman stick entirely to the script. Even if they do, we believe the fourth member of the council Franc Gambatese deserves praise for refusing to participate in these closed-door sessions.
Because the issue here isn’t whether the council has the right to interview the candidates in private. It’s whether interviewing the candidates in private is the right thing to do.
And, in our view, it isn’t.
As Councilman Gambatese points out, we’re not talking about hiring a township employee here. We’re talking about appointing a voting member of the governing body, a policymaking position. The appointee will serve until a special election is held in November to fill the unexpired term. For five months, this person will take on all the responsibilities and powers that are normally vested in an elected official.
We believe the entire process for selecting this person should take place in public, including the interviews. And we find the arguments put forward by the three-member council majority to justify conducting these interviews in private to be entirely unconvincing.
We don’t think, for example, that holding the interviews in public would give candidates interviewed later in the process an unfair advantage over those interviewed earlier. Unless the interviews were so regimented, so unimaginative that they posed exactly the same set of questions to every candidate (a stilted situation, it should be noted, that conducting the interviews in private virtually requires in order to avoid violating the Sunshine Law), there is no reason to believe a strong, qualified candidate interviewed early wouldn’t stand out over a weaker, less-qualified candidate interviewed later.
Nor do we think the fact that 10 candidates have applied to fill the vacancy, rather than just two or three, justifies taking the process private. Sure, it’s a messier process when it’s done in public, and it’s more unwieldy when there are a lot of candidates instead of a few. But that’s the price we sometimes pay for democracy. It isn’t always tidy and efficient. Sometimes, it’s messy and unwieldy and time-consuming and hard work because conducting the public’s business allows no, make that requires the public’s participation and involvement.
So we won’t take the West Windsor Township Council to court over this ill-advised decision. But we will take its three-member majority to task for making it and for justifying it as a matter of convenience when the real concern here should be a matter of civic duty. We’re pleased that Mr. Gambatese set a good example. We’re disappointed that his colleagues set a bad precedent.

