By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton Council candidate Anne Neumann on Monday publicly confronted fellow Democrat Mayor Liz Lempert about her conflict of interest with Princeton University and called on the mayor to recuse herself from “any matter” involving the university, because Princeton employs the mayor’s husband.
Ms. Neumann, speaking in the public comment session at the council meeting, cited recent examples to make her case. She said the mayor, at a March 14 council meeting, should not have suggested delaying the rezoning of the former graduate housing complex, known as the Butler tract, on Harrison Street. A majority of council members and residents who live in the neighborhood around the property want to make sure Nassau Hall only can develop the site for residences, not for anything else.
“It would not be unreasonable to assume that the university could make plans for the site and submit an application before the site is rezoned,” Ms. Neumann said.
Ms. Neumann also said Mayor Lempert should recuse herself from a downtown task force that is “meeting privately to discuss with the university, what you called in a recent e-mail to me, ‘the aesthetics of the sidewalks and other public infrastructure on Nassau Street.’ ”
“You may feel this is an example in which the university would benefit the town rather than the other way around, because, presumably, you are hoping the university will contribute financially to the downtown’s revitalization,” Ms. Neumann said. “I see the matter differently, however, and so might others.”
She urged Mayor Lempert to follow the example of former borough councilman David Goldfarb, who would recuse himself from university business and leave the meeting, given he worked for a law firm that Nassau Hall had retained.
For her part, Mayor Lempert said from the dais she follows the town’s conflict of interest policy “scrupulously.”
Councilwoman Heather H. Howard, a university employee who has a similar conflict of interest, jumped in to defend the mayor. “We can assure the public that we do follow it scrupulously and our counsel can attest to it,” she said.
That Ms. Neumann would confront Mayor Lempert came as no surprise to fellow Democrats, as she had recently tried to bring up the issue less than two weeks earlier.
Ms. Neumann had started to raise the mayor’s conflict at a private meeting of the executive board of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization April 2 at Councilwoman Jo S. Butler’s house, Ms. Butler said Thursday. But participants of the meeting objected because it was “not the right forum” given that there was a quorum of the Princeton Council present including Mayor Lempert and that the issue was not club business, Ms. Butler said .
The future of the Butler tract has come to the fore at a time when the university has been clearing the 33-acre site. The school has said it likely would be reused for residential purposes, although a majority of council members want to make sure that is the only way the land is redeveloped.
Earlier Monday, at her press conference, Mayor Lempert was asked about how involved she would be in the process steps leading to the possible rezoning.
“I’ll probably recuse from most of it,” she said. “If we have a work session on it or if we have an ordinance introduction, I would recuse from those. And I would recuse when the attorneys advise me to.”
Yet at the same time she would not remove herself from putting the item on the council’s agenda.
“No, I put together the agenda. When we have general discussions about priorities for 2016, I think all of us are involved in all of that,” she said.
She pointed to how Council President Lance Liverman was involved in creating goals for 2016; one of them included making the Jackson-Witherspoon neighborhood a historic district, something he recused himself from voting on.
Mayor Lempert, whose husband, Ken Norman, works in the psychology department and Princeton Neuroscience Institute, has sought to navigate the conflict with the university in her time in public office — as a township committeewoman and now as mayor.
Prior to consolidation, she did not participate in the township committee vote to rezone land for the university’s arts and transit project, a decision that Ms. Neumann sued to overturn as a private citizen. But Mayor Lempert voted for agreements for the university to give voluntary contributions to the township, in 2011 and again in 2012. She had been in negotiations with the university on Nassau Hall providing nearly $2.5 million to the consolidated town in 2013, the first year of the merger.
Also in 2013, she insisted that she would be part of a team of municipal officials to negotiate with Nassau Hall a long-term agreement for contributions. She backed down after Councilwoman Jo S. Butler voiced opposition to that idea.
Last December, Mayor Lempert disclosed that she has had private meetings with university administrators, something she said past mayors have done.
For her part, Ms. Neumann has butted heads with Nassau Hall before, having been a plaintiff in suing over the relocation of NJ Transit’s Dinky train.
She is running in the four-way race for council along with incumbent Jenny Crumiller, Leticia Fraga and Tim Quinn in the Democratic primary, June 7. Ms. Neumann, part of the leadership of the PCDO, is the first candidate to criticize Mayor Lempert about the conflict of interest issue — one that Mayor Lempert’s Republican opponent in the general election also has raised.
GOP hopeful Peter Marks, who attended the council meeting, said outside the meeting room that he thought “Anne has a point.”
“There’s obviously a conflict,” he said. “I don’t know that we’re scrupulously careful in acknowledging the conflict.”
