Residents invited to meet with ethics panel Tuesday
BY JESSICA SMITH
Staff Writer

MONROE - An ethics committee formed last summer by Mayor Richard Pucci will hold its first public meeting Tuesday to accept residents' input.

Pucci created the seven-member panel in July after he was accused of being involved in a conflict of interest because of his consultant work with the political action committee founded by former state Sen. John Lynch, who recently pleaded guilty to corruption charges.

The date of next week's meeting has been called into question by one township resident, who feels it is intentionally being held at a time when few will be paying attention.

"Nov. 21 is two days before Thanksgiving in what is a 'short week,' " Republican Club member Harold Kane wrote in a letter to the Sentinel. "The citizens of Monroe will be preoccupied with holiday activities, family, football and travel. They may want to be involved with the machinations of the municipality, but not at this time. Coupled with the holiday festivities is the fact that the thousands of snowbirds that live in Monroe are gone for the winter and cannot, no matter how much they may want to, attend this meeting."

Ethics Committee Chairman and former judge Joseph Sadofski denied any such motives for choosing this date, saying the committee always meets on Tuesdays. He said he picked the date somewhat arbitrarily.

"Certainly if someone wanted to e-mail us and comment, or write a letter and comment, we would certainly take it into consideration," said Guy Baehr, a founding member of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government and associate director of the Journalism Resources Institute at Rutgers University.

The scheduling was not meant to exclude anyone, Baehr said, it was just the next available date. He said if people are interested and unable to attend, they could send their input to Township Administrator Wayne Hamilton, who would pass it on to the committee.

The purpose of the meeting is to get input from the public, and handouts outlining the committee's activities will be distributed, according to Hamilton. While he was unsure if the minutes of the committee's previous meetings would be made public, he said that the final report will be accessible to the public.

The meeting will take place at 7 p.m. in the municipal building.

Nothing has been made final by the committee, so nothing could be disclosed prior to the meeting, Sadofski said.

"There is varied opinion about everything," said Sadofski. "We don't claim to be experts in the area, but we each have opinions about things."

Kane also took issue with the committee being composed of mostly Democrats, with one Republican member. The committee would carry more legitimacy if it had a better mix of parties involved, Kane said.

Pucci is a Democrat.

"We're not a political group, we just want to see what people are concerned about," Sadofski said.

Township Engineer Ernie Feist and Township Attorney Joel Shain serve as advisors for the committee, which Kane also found questionable, since they are employees of the town.

Feist and Shain are not voting members, and are only there to provide information and answer questions about the workings of the township for committee members, said Baehr.