By: Cara Latham
NORTH HANOVER The Township Committee unanimously agreed last week to ask the state Local Finance Board for an advisory opinion on a possible conflict of interest when a former committeeman voted on a land subdivision in 2002.
The request is for the LFB to look into whether former Committeeman John Kocubinski should have recused himself when the committee voted on a land subdivision and site plan review ordinance, after he unsuccessfully attempted to purchase a piece of land the ordinance would affect.
Mr. Kocubinski, who was defeated in a bid for the Township Committee as a Democratic candidate this year, said this week that if he had still been interested in the piece of property at the time of the vote, he would have recused himself.
Township Attorney Mark Roselli said the township has an obligation to report its findings that he may have had a conflict of interest, so that "at the very least, no one can now come back against this Township Committee and say hey, you didn’t do anything."
The 2002 ordinance requires landowners whose parcels were once farmed to test for pesticides before applying to develop it.
It was first introduced after Irongate LLC applied to the Township Joint Land Use and Planning Board to develop seven building lots on Province Line Road in 2000.
Mr. Kocubinski said Tuesday in a phone interview that in February 2000, before Irongate applied for the subdivision, he had put in an offer of about $610,000 to purchase the 88 acres of property for his children, 87 acres of which he would have been required to enroll into the county’s farmland preservation program.
After his offer was not accepted, Irongate put in a bid for the property, and was required to come before the Planning Board, of which Mr. Kocubinski was a member at the time.
Mayor Bill Tilton said in a phone interview Tuesday that Mr. Kocubinski sat on the Planning Board during the application process, but did not recuse himself from being involved in the matter.
"The land sale is what complicated the issue," he said. "The more important issue that we were asking them (the LFB) to take a look at is what he did after the offer was not accepted," he said.
But after his offer was declined, Mr. Kocubinski said, "that was the end of … us looking to pursue the property," he said. "That was the last contact with the Realtor."
Mr. Kocubinski said he feels the issue has been a political one for the past three years, and that when the application was made by Irongate for the subdivision, he found out that one of the members of the group was, in fact, his Realtor.
But, "when the application came in front of the (Planning) Board, I had no ongoing negotiations or interest in the property," he said.
Still, the board "kept throwing up road blocks and barriers for them to overcome," said Mayor Tilton. "When you look at the property, it was a no-brainer. He used the township officials to create these ordinances and put these roadblocks up… He should have recused himself from any of the conversation or voting on that (Irongate) property."
When officials asked the applicant to test the soil, the applicant refused because there was no ordinance in place requiring them to do so. The application was then denied by the board in July 2002, and the original soil testing ordinance was considered at a subsequent meeting.
Mr. Kocubinski said he actually voted in favor of granting preliminary approval, granted the conditions defined in the preliminary approval were upheld when Irongate appeared before the Planning Board to get final approval.
But, "not all the conditions that were agreed to were met," he said, adding that someone else made the motion to deny the final approval, and that the vote was unanimous. One of the conditions it did not meet was that officials wanted Irongate to test for Meadow Life fertilizer.
Data from Rutgers showed that "it can be used as a fertilizer," but that "it indicated it had to be applied with certain guidelines," said Mr. Kocubinski.
Because it was denied final approval, Mr. Kocubinski said Irongate filed a lawsuit, and Superior Court Judge John Sweeney ruled that since the township didn’t have a testing ordinance in place, it was not able to enforce the testing.
The Township Committee then introduced the ordinance in August 2002, which would have required that Irongate test for Meadow Life fertilizer contamination.
But Judge Sweeney ruled the ordinance was stricter than state Department of Environmental Protection Standards.
Therefore, officials were required to adopt a 2003 amendment to the ordinance that allows preliminary assessment and remediation of sites with actual or suspected historic pesticide residue.
If his actual offer to buy the land was accepted in 2000, Mr. Kocubinski might not have been able to enroll the land into the county preservation program anyway, he said, thus eliminating his chances of getting reimbursed because if Meadow Life had been used on the land, it would have been rejected from the program, said Mr. Kocubinski.
Township Attorney Mark Roselli said in March 2004 that he found a letter addressed to former board member Kenneth Inman and written by representatives with Irongate that stated that a former committeeman had a conflict of interest in the matter and should not have been present during the voting process.
Mayor Tilton said township officials, after having received legal bills in the latter part of 2005 because the township had lost in court, went back and pulled the records and listened to the audio tapes recorded by the board, and "you can clearly hear that he led the charge," on the matter, he said. "He almost appeared as if he was the chairman of the committee when he was a mayor designee."
"I’m not saying that his gain was retribution here, but it clearly crosses the line," Mayor Tilton said. The real issue of the matter, he said, "was that (Mr. Kocubinski) used township officials to block this subdivision. Clearly, we didn’t need to spend this kind of money. We lost in court."
While Mr. Roselli said he did not know how much the legal fees cost, "it’s directly affecting the residents because obviously their tax dollars are being used to pay these old bills," he said.
In addition, Mr. Kocubinski is still a public official today, as he is appointed to the state Soil Conservation Commission, said Mr. Roselli.
"The important part to remember is that he continues to be a public official today," he said. "That’s something that should be kept in line, and that’s something (a possible conflict of interest) that needs to be reported and discussed."
But Mr. Kocubinski maintained that he recalls the court proceedings only carried minimal costs for the township, and that he believes the insurance company actually reimbursed the township. He is going to see what comes of the state’s decision, he said.
"I’m positive that the facts are really going to hit the table," he said.

