Months after the Hillsborough Township Ethical Standards Board cleared then Committeewoman Gloria McCauley and Business Administrator Anthony Ferrera of any wrongdoing after a citizens group accused them of a quid-pro-quo, those same citizens have filed an appeal with the state.
Roger E. Koch and a group called Citizens for Hillsborough formally filed appeals with the local finance board of the state Department of Community Affairs’ Local Government Services Division last month. The appeals correspond with real estate transactions between McCauley and Ferrera, as well as another transaction between McCauley, who became mayor in January 2018, and Township Clerk Pamela Borek.
In both cases, the appeals state Ferrera and Borek chose McCauley to list the sale of their respective homes “on or around August 2017.” The complaints and appeals both allege that the business administrator and township clerk did so after the township committee, including McCauley as mayor, voted to approve their salary increases.
According to the complaint, those actions violated aspects of N.J.S.A. 40A:9-22.5, which states that “no local government officer or employee or member of his immediate family shall have an interest in a business organization or engage in business transaction, or professional activity, which is in substantial conflict with the proper discharge of his duties in the public interest.”
In a joint statement from McCauley, Ferrera and Borek, the township officials called the initial complaints a “partisan strategy to influence voters” prior to the November 2017 election.
“There were no listing agreements or discussions pertaining thereto between the parties prior to adoption of the salary resolution,” they said. “To infer one event was contingent upon the other without any evidence whatsoever to support such an allegation is nothing more than disingenuous partisan politics.”
All three officials attested that the salary increases unanimously approved by the township committee last year took place prior to the separate listing of Borek’s and Ferrera’s homes.
“The fact of the matter is each year the township evaluates and adjusts the annual salaries of employees as appropriate,” they said. “The evaluation process includes analysis of the annual salaries being paid to local government employees in other municipalities based on job title and responsibilities. The township followed this same procedure for 2017 culminating in the adoption of a resolution establishing the annual salaries and wages of 34 of its municipal employees.”
Koch also contends that the ethics board itself faced conflicts of interest when it made its determinations last December. In both cases, their “admitted personal relationships with the members of the township committee, the accompanying natural sympathy favoring committee member McCauley, and the natural inclination not to offend the personal relationships with the township committee” should have disqualified them from making a determination.
The ethics board’s conflicts, Koch wrote in the appeal, stem largely from the fact that each member is appointed by the governing body.
In the case of the McCauley and Borek complaint, Koch wrote in the appeal that the board denied the citizens group the chance to withdraw its complaint in advance on the Dec. 23, 2017 hearing.