Civil libertarian asks for action on borough ordinance
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Civil libertarian John Paff may finally hear the Borough Council discuss Monday whether to repeal or modify a disorderly conduct ordinance Mr. Paff says is illegal.
Mr. Paff has pressed the borough since last year to repeal the ordinance, which seeks to prohibit various types of “vice, immorality, drunkenness and disorderly conduct.”
Mr. Paff says former Borough Attorney C. Douglas Reina in June 2003 wrote “there is no question” the ordinance has been preempted by the provisions of state Title 2C.
In the same letter, Mr. Reina promised the ordinance would not be included in an upcoming ordinance codification. Ten years later, Mr. Paff said, it appears neither the repeal nor the codification ever occurred.
Mr. Paff also says that in August 2011, the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office warned Manville Municipal Prosecutor Matthew Dorsi that he might face an “ethical complaint and/or a supercession by this office” if he continued to downgrade statutory charges to violations of the borough ordinance.
”Do you agree with me that it’s high time that Manville repealed this relic from the books?” Mr. Paff wrote the council June 17.
He received a one-sentence reply June 27 that read, “The mayor and Borough Council will consider Ordinance 396 at its regularly scheduled meeting on July 15, 2013.”
Mr. Paff, a resident of Franklin Township and chairman of the New Jersey Libertarian Party’s Open Government Advocacy Project, became interested in the topic during last year’s controversy over appropriate punishment of then-Recreation Director Richard Armstrong for consuming alcohol on school grounds during a May 19 softball tournament.
Mr. Armstrong was suspended from employment, which caused him to lose about $1,000 in pay, but not charged legally.
Mr. Paff submitted two Open Public Records Act requests seeking to find out whether Mr. Armstrong’s alleged misconduct, i.e., being intoxicated in public, violated the law.
After reading the responses, he said he concluded Mr. Armstrong could have been charged with violating the borough ordinance.
He juxtaposed this with a police item from August that said police charged two local men with “consumption of alcohol in public” under another borough ordinance that prohibits consumption of alcohol in nonlicensed public places where live entertainment is offered.