By Geoffrey Wertime, Staff Writer
BORDENTOWN TOWNSHIP Committeeman William Morelli has lodged a complaint with the state Office of the Comptroller over Mayor Bruce Hill’s use of sick time.
Mr. Morelli said he made the complaint Tuesday morning when he handed over minutes from the Township Committee’s Jan. 25 meeting.
At that meeting, Mr. Morelli claimed fellow Republican Mayor Hill, who works for the state Department of Transportation, illegally used sick time to attend a Jan. 21 meeting with township employees. Mayor Hill then said he was unaware it was against state law to use sick time for personal business and would “rectify” the error.
Tuesday, Mr. Morelli said he met with Patrick Morgan, an investigator with the comptroller’s office, and asked him to take up an investigation. Mr. Morelli anticipated the department “will write up a report, they will gauge the seriousness of it and turn it over to the Department of Transportation for follow-up.”
According to the minutes from the Jan. 25 meeting, Mayor Hill said he did take a sick day for the Jan. 21 meeting but also had a doctor’s appointment.
”But I don’t think that’s any of the township’s business what I do,” the mayor said in the minutes.
Mr. Morelli, who was mayor in 2009, has verbally sparred with Mayor Hill through both of their most recent mayoral administrations. But he said Tuesday that his complaint was not motivated by personal animosity.
”I’m not the one who started this. Bruce started this in his folly, in his egocentric thinking,” he said. “When you’re hired by the state, one of the first things they teach you is how to fill out a time card … He can’t plead ignorance. My personal feelings for Bruce have absolutely zero to do with this. If this were (former mayor) George Chidley, I’d be doing exactly the same thing.”
Instead, Mr. Morelli said the mayor’s alleged actions are “an important issue.”
”It may seem like nitpicking,” he said, “but the message it sends, for instance, to township employees is a horrendous message, that whatever the state or township rules are, if you don’t agree with them, then you don’t have to abide by them.”
Reached for comment Tuesday, Mayor Hill said he preferred not to comment on the issue “because it’s an attack on my personal life.”
In a press release from his office dated Jan. 21, State Comptroller Matthew Boxer praised the Civil Service Commission for ruling the Woodbridge Fire District No. 1’s policy of allowing sick time to be used for personal business was illegal.
Pete McAleer, a spokesman for the comptroller’s office, declined to comment on this particular issue, saying, “By policy, we do not comment on potential requests for investigations.”
At the Jan. 25 meeting, Committeeman Jason Medina, a Democrat, made repeated references to Mayor Hill’s oft-repeated claims throughout 2009 that then-mayor William Morelli was operating a “secret government” and excluding him and former Republican Committeeman Mark Roselli.
”For most of last year,” Mr. Medina said to Mayor Hill on Jan. 25, “there was a lot of talk about secret government … And to some extent I understood your frustration, and that’s why I’m a little disappointed in the events that have unfolded so far, and we’re not even a month into this new administration.”
Mr. Medina said the Jan. 21 meeting, like several other decisions he said were effectively made before they were brought to the full committee, “falls well into that parameter” of “secret government.”
Mayor Hill said Mr. Medina was using the “wrong terminology,” and “private meetings” were being held in the township. He also apologized, saying he meant to inform Mr. Medina of the Jan. 21 meeting but got caught up in other matters.
On Tuesday, Mayor Hill said he was simply following his duties.
”I am the mayor, and I am responsible for the entire township,” he said. “And when I call a staff meeting I don’t have to let anybody know, and I did nothing wrong. I can have a staff meeting any time I like. My responsibility as mayor and a member of the Township Committee is that once I have this meeting that I come back to my fellow committee members and let them know what happened and that’s exactly what I did.”
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