Andrew Martins, Managing Editor
An ethics complaint filed against Committeewoman Gloria McCauley and Business Administrator Anthony Ferrera was recently thrown out by the Hillsborough Township Ethical Standards Board after its members ruled that neither party was guilty of any impropriety.
The decision came during the board’s first meeting in years on Saturday, Dec. 9.
The meeting was called solely to discuss a petition filed by a group of residents, which asserted that McCauley had facilitated, and accepted a commission for, the sale of Ferrera’s home in the same year that the committee voted to increase the business administrator’s annual salary by 5.45 percent. Those actions, the complaint alleges, are the makings of a quid-pro-quo.
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.”
“We want the township committee to know the ethics rules and to comply with them,” Roger Koch, one of the signatories on the complaint, said at the meeting.
A second complaint against Committeeman Greg Burchette was not heard by the township’s ethics board, since it is currently being dealt with at the Superior Court level.
Prior to the start of the meeting, Koch called upon the ethics board to recuse itself from the hearing, since all five of its members were appointed by the township committee. He also pointed to previous comments made by Township Attorney William Willard that called the complaint an “unsubstantiated partisan attack,” stating that the attorney’s assertion could have created some prejudicial notions within the board.
Ethics Board member Steven Cohen called the call for recusal “nonsense.”
“Everyone has been striving 100 percent to being ethical and fair and not to prejudge. If you don’t think we have been, you have the right to appeal,” Cohen said.
Ethics Board Chairman Abed Medawar echoed those sentiments, stating that the board aimed to be fair and ethically sound, despite the fact that “there are relationships…that exist between board members and different people on the township committee.”
“We don’t feel that that takes away our impartiality at this time,” Medawar said. “We believe we can compartmentalize these issues and we believe we can look at them on their own merits.”
After determining that the board was able to continue without the need to recuse itself from the issue at hand, Mayor Carl Suraci approached the board to provide his take on the complaint and to defend his colleagues on the governing body.
“I have known Committeewoman McCauley for a little over 10 years…I find Gloria McCauley the most trustworthy, ethical person with no ulterior motives and I have no reason not to trust her,” he said.
The mayor also said that regardless of the real estate transaction, which he said took place well after the vote to increase Ferrera’s salary, the committee would have voted to approve the salary adjustments.
Each year, the township committee votes on annual salary rates for every municipal employee. In Ferrera’s case, Willard previously stated that his larger than average increase in pay stemmed from the fact that he serves as the township’s administrator, deputy clerk, ADA director and deputy zoning officer.
“These [salary increases] were not out of line,” Suraci said. “You do try to remain competitive with salaries in the area because you don’t want to lose good people.”
Suraci also called into question the real motive behind the complaint, echoing Willard’s previous sentiments that the ethics filing was a “character assassination attempt” by Democrats within the township looking to damage McCauley politically just weeks before her reelection to the committee last month.
While Koch did not deny that there may have been some “political overtones” within the complaint, he stressed that there was more to it than an attempt to discredit a Republican candidate.
“The Democrats in this town felt that the all-Republican township committee was unchecked ethically. There was no one amongst that board who would call another member to task when they acted unethically,” Koch said. “They’re not all Democrats on that list…I don’t see anything wrong in the two party system if the Democrats bring a complaint against a party that’s in charge.”
Despite the ethics charge, McCauley won reelection with her running mate, Republican Doug Tomson, who garnered 6,150 and 6,232 votes respectively on Nov. 7. By contrast, their Democrat counterparts Jane Staats and Harrison “Harry” Burke received 5,601 votes and 5,392 votes, respectively.
On Monday, Ferrera said the board’s decision vindicated himself and McCauley, stating that he has “always worked, not out of self-interest, but for the betterment of the Hillsborough community and township.”
“To suggest there was a connection between my 2017 salary adjustment and the subsequent listing of my home with Committeewoman McCauley was simply untrue,” Ferrera said. “I am extremely disappointed the opposing party chose to impugn my character with the filing of a frivolous ethics complaint just prior to the election for political gain. We see this type of politics on the national and state level, but it is particularly disheartening to see it at the local municipal level.”
McCauley said she was confident that she and Ferrera would be cleared of any malfeasance.
“I am extremely disappointed that this frivolous ethics charge, which was partisan politics at its lowest, was brought into Hillsborough by the local Democrats,” she said. “While I am clearly pleased with the decision of the local ethics board, which completely exonerated me, I knew that I did not do anything wrong and therefore, I was confident it would come to that decision.”
McCauley called the complaint “sad,” since she believes it was an attempt by the township’s Democrats to “assassinate my character as a means of impacting a local election.”
“I am very grateful to the voters of Hillsborough for seeing through this partisan attack and ensuring that the strong Republican leadership in Hillsborough will continue,” she said.
Koch said on Tuesday that he and his fellow complainants intend to file an appeal based on what he called a “lack of impartiality of the board members and their lawyer Eric Bernstein’s office,” as well as a number of perceived errors in the board’s reasons for their determination.
