HILLSBOROUGH: Last week featured furor over fliers

Back-and-forth mailers were in mail, on doorsteps

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
   Hillsborough residents were bombarded with last-week campaign information, mostly about the local referendum question on use of future open space tax funds to build recreational facilities.
   A second Republican Party mailer supporting the referendum followed days after a controversial first one that drew howls of protest from opponents of the referendum and state environmental leaders, who said they were misquoted.
   It drew a second response from Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, urging Hillsborough voters to reject the attempt.
   The local Democratic organization picked up on the growing furor and produced a handout, entitled “Don’t Buy the Lie,” of its own. In it, Arthur Skaar, the Democratic candidate for Township Committee, urged a “no” vote on the open space ballot referendum.
   ”If the Republican Party will deliberately mislead you about open space, you need to replace them,” the hand-delivered material read.
   The ballot question asks voters’ permission to use up to 20 percent of future years’ open space tax receipts for the “development and improvement” for the township’s recreation and open space properties.
   The Republicans’ information, which was ordered and produced at the same time as the first piece mailed a few days earlier, on one side cited three “myths” and their corresponding corrective “facts” about the referendum. They addressed questions on money for open space, what the diverted money would be used for and the existence of a “slush fund,” which they denied.
   On the other side of the information, the flier repeated a partial quote from Mr. Tittel. It said “new revenue” was needed for recreation and to allow people to use open space they had paid for. The quote used an ellipsis (the three-dot “. . .” ) to indicate words had been left out.
   Mr. Tittel put out a second press release decrying the maneuver and labeling it a “dirty trick.”
   The original quote was about using a portion of the statewide sales tax for open space and recreation, “and had nothing to do with a local open space trust fund,” he said. “The fact that they have to go to lies and distort a quote shows that they are wrong,” said Mr. Tittel.
   ”If they can deliberately lie and mislead on a piece of mail they should not be trusted with open space monies,” said Mr. Tittel. “We urge the people of Hillsborough to vote no against these dirty tricks and for open space.”
   Candidate Skaar’s flier urged voters to reject the GOP flier. “Don’t believe it,” reads the Democratic Party material.
   The third mailer from the Hillsborough Republican Election Committee landed in my mailbox on Monday. Called “Hillsborough Highlights,” it dedicated one of the four pages to the open space ballot question.
   After being contacted by the local citizens’ group opposing the local referendum, the three environmental leaders said the omissions of words changed their meanings and intentions.
   Mr. Tittel said his truncated quote wrongfully was a “political dirty trick and a deliberate mischaracterization” of the club’s position.
   The flier was written, produced and paid for by the local Republican organization. Steven Sireci, the township’s Republican organization chairman, said the flier uses a published quote of Mr. Tittel’s.
   ”We didn’t make it up,” he said.
   He said that “nobody was lying because he (Mr. Tittel) said these things” and “the meaning was very clear.”
   He said political fliers “don’t typically publish the entire quote.”
   ”If, in the next sentence, he said something else, “that doesn’t mean he didn’t say what was in the previous sentence,” Dr. Sireci said.
   Whatever was published “speaks for itself in the English language,” he said.
   A second quote was attributed to the vice president for government relations for NJ Audubon. The quote from 2011 says that state bills would give funding for parks and playgrounds, “which help keep our children healthy and raise property values . . . This is the kind of investment we need . . . to preserve safe, clean places for our children to play.”
   That person is Kelly Mooij, who said in an email, the Audubon Society wasn’t working on the measure.
   ”We have not taken a position, testified nor endorsed this measure,” she said. “We were not asked and did not provide permission for our quotes to be used. The quotes included in the political mailer were taken out of context, without our permission or knowledge, from a press release on an unrelated matter.”
   A third quote from “chair of the N.J. Keep It Green coalition” applauded Governor Christie. . . “continuing these wise investments. . . quality parks for our children and children.”
   The coalition’s chair is Tom Gilbert, senior conservation finance director for The Trust for Public Land. He said his quote on the flier “is taken out of context.”
   ”The Trust for Public Land was not asked for, nor did we provide, our permission to use the quote included on the mailer in support of the Hillsborough referendum,” he said. “The quote is taken out of context, since it applies to state Green Acres funding announced back in 2011, not the Hillsborough referendum. The Trust for Public Land has no position on the Hillsborough referendum.”
   Mr. Tittel compared the mailer to historic “dirty tricks.”
   ”This is type of stuff that Nixon did during Watergate and just like Nixon they didn’t think they would get caught,” he said. “He got caught and we are catching the Hillsborough Republicans doing the same thing. What they did was wrong and despicable,” he said.
   Dr. Sireci said he felt Mr. Tittel was told about the GOP flier from Democrats who gave him their perception of what was happening, and that governed Mr. Tittel’s reaction.
   ”He’s a single-issue guy and it was presented to him as being misquoted about building, especially artificial turf fields, on parkland,” Dr. Sireci said.
   An email from John Beggiato from the local Friends of Hillsborough Open Space showed that the group had emailed the three organizations, summarized the local question and said that FOHOS was “dismayed by a statement in a political mailer that implies that open space advocates are in agreement with this diversion of funds.”
   FOHOS pointed to published articles and told the three environmentalists they believe the flier’s quotes were “cobbled” from the printed statements.
   ”Did you agree to be quoted and do you in fact agree with their proposal?” the FOHOS email said. “If not, could you provide a response” that we can post?
   Dr. Sireci, the local Republican leader, insisted the mailer only used material in the public domain.
   ”The words that are there still say what they say,” Dr. Sireci said.
   ”I cannot consider what was in the man’s head,” Dr. Sireci said. “We worked with what is published and those words were published, and those words say something about the benefit of enjoying open space.”
   He decried about what he called a double standard about “Democrats” statements about the referendum, including the “lie” that the money was going for artificial fields. Criticizing the Republicans use of language and campaign fliers was “a double standard,” he said.
   He said opponents used the word “diversion” as if it meant money “was going to go to some secret bank account.”
   He said opponents were people who opposed the referendum were for keeping the land into “ticks and poison ivy, without destroying another thing.”
   ”Mr. Tittel would rather have open space untouched by human hands,” said Dr. Sireci.
   ”If anybody who thinks that, having paid for the land, taxpayers could use it or enjoy it, I highly encourage him to consider voting for it.”
   He pointed to the example of the high school cross country teams lacking a course of their own in the township. Instead they have to travel to the Natirar county park in Gladstone for their “home” meets, he said.