Several resolutions, including rule expansion, considered
By: Hank Kalet
MONROE Dealing with potential conflicts of interest involving members of township land-use boards will be the focus of a public meeting hosted next week by an ethics panel appointed by Mayor Richard Pucci earlier this year.
The panel has been discussing several options for dealing with potential conflicts, including expanded disclosure rules for board members and applicants and tighter rules governing when a board member should recuse him or herself from hearing an application.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the seven-member panel will outline the issues it has been reviewing and some of the options it is considering and then open the meeting to the public for feedback. The meeting will take place at 7 p.m. in the Municipal Building.
"The primary purpose is to get public input," panel member Guy Baehr said Tuesday. "We’ve been working on a whole variety of proposals and ingredients for recommendations and we wanted to get a sense from the public" about what it considers important.
Mr. Baehr, a former reporter with The Star-Ledger and assistant director of the Journalism Resources Institute at Rutgers, said the panel will then take the public comment and incorporate it into its final recommendation to the Township Council. A recommendation is expected before the end of the year.
Mayor Richard Pucci created the panel in July, about six weeks after his connections to a political action committee founded by former state Senate President John Lynch, who was rumored at the time to be under federal investigation, became public. Mr. Lynch pleaded guilty in September to bribery charges.
Mayor Pucci had been a paid consultant for Mr. Lynch’s New Directions Through Responsible Leadership PAC when it received contributions from developer Jack Morris. Mr. Morris is the developer of the Applegarth Professional Center on Applegarth Road, and is working with Steve Kalafer, owner of the Somerset Patriots, on a proposal to build a mixed-use development that would include an independent-league baseball team on Route 33.
Editorials in several newspapers, including The Cranbury Press, questioned the relationship and Mayor Pucci dissolved his consulting firm in May and announced his intention to form the ethics panel.
Mr. Baehr, who was a founder of Open Government in N.J., said the panel is considering two approaches to the conflict issue: recusal by board members and expanded disclosure rules.
While it is still early in the process, Mr. Baehr said, the panel may recommend that an ordinance be drafted so that board members are compelled to recuse themselves when certain conflicts arise.
The panel has "tried to follow, to be aware of what the laws are, the laws in other municipalities so that we’re not completely reinventing the wheel," Mr. Baehr said.
But it also is prepared to expand the definition where necessary, he said.
Most potential conflicts, he said, will not fall into that category and a decision on how to proceed will have to be left to the individual board members.
"They will have to use their own sense that this is something I can’t decide in an unbiased way or that it would have that appearance," he said.
That’s why it is important that disclosure rules be considered both for board members, who might have to disclose financial or other relationships to an applicant or its professionals, and applicants, who maybe required to disclose campaign contributions or financial relationships with board members or township professional staff.
"In many cases, disclosure is the right remedy," he said. "Then the public can judge the disclosure. They can get up at a meeting and ask that the board member step down. The key is to have it out in the open."
He said that the panel is focusing on crafting rules that "would actually work."
"We wanted to come up with something that would not just sound good, but would be practical," he said. "You can put something that is pie in the sky on paper, but if it’s impractical it won’t be enforced."

