By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Borough Council had too many unanswered questions Tuesday for officials to approve increasing the legal budget for its regular law firm and a special attorney handling primarily Dinky related issues.
They agreed to delay acting on separate resolutions involving Hill Wallack and lawyer Stephen Barcan pending more information from Borough Administrator Robert W. Bruschi, who was absent from Tuesday’s meeting.
The contract between Hill Wallack and the borough was originally capped at $175,000 for all of 2012 meaning legal expenditures had to stay at or below that amount unless council approved a change.
For reasons still unclear to council members, they were asked to vote to raise the cap on the Hill Wallack contract to $245,000 a $70,000 increase.
Similarly, Mr. Barcan’s agreement was capped at $15,000, but now the borough must decide whether to raise that to $58,000.
”I don’t know. I want to find out,” Councilman Kevin Wilkes said Wednesday when asked what the increases were about.
Some officials said it was not clear to them if both requests had to do with past legal work that needed to be paid for or if there is anticipated work that needs to be covered.
”Maybe Bob Bruschi has the explanation. I’ll bet he does. But he wasn’t there (Tuesday) night,” Councilman Roger Martindell said Wednesday.
Mr. Martindell, chairman of the council’s Finance Committee, said it was clear to him that the legal budget was “clearly exceeded” without a formal action by the council. He said he wanted to know who authorized that and why.
Borough Councilwoman Jo Butler said she suspected the bulk of the Hill Wallack increase had to do with reconciling municipal ordinances between the borough and the township for consolidation.
Maeve E. Cannon, the borough attorney who is a partner of Hill Wallack, could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Barcan works for the borough on matters involving NJ Transit because Hill Wallack has a conflict of interest; NJ Transit has been and is a client of the law firm, officials said. Ms. Butler said the matters he worked on included a government records request by Princeton University seeking emails between borough officials and opponents of moving the Dinky.
Mr. Barcan could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

