In the meantime, a stalemate over the redevelopment attorney in West Windsor might surface Monday, February 25, if the Township Council introduces a resolution approving an attorney not recommended by the mayor.##M:[more]##
During the meeting, council is scheduled to have three resolutions on the table — one for designating the council as the redevelopment entity, one removing Planning Board chairman Marvin Gardner from the redevelopment steering committee, and one recommending a candidate for the redevelopment attorney.
This isn’t the first dispute between the council and mayor over a lawyer, and the devil is in the details of the compromise made to resolve that previous conflict, which is causing the debate this time around.
After the council majority members took the reins in July, Councilman Charles Morgan tried to oust current Township Attorney Mike Herbert, a move that Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh vehemently opposed, even going so far as threatening a lawsuit against the council over the matter.
Morgan submitted a 14-page memorandum to the board questioning Herbert’s professionalism, partiality, and the accuracy of his legal advice. However, his fellow council members voted against him, and later approved a service agreement with Herbert’s firm.
To end the conflict, the council passed a resolution on July 23 in which it granted the mayor’s wishes and allowed Herbert to stay on as the township’s attorney under the condition that the township would be able to hire a separate attorney for redevelopment.
Now Morgan believes the mayor is “reneging” on his part of the deal. He says that out of the five law firms that submitted proposals for the job, the two that the mayor is recommending “aren’t acceptable to a majority of council.”
Morgan claims in the compromise reached over the summer, the mayor agreed to approve of a candidate whom the council also accepts. “Unless he comes up with another recommendation that we can accept, we’re at a stalemate, and it’s a problem because the mayor keeps talking about how he wants to work together, yet he isn’t listening to what a majority of council is saying it wants,” Morgan said.
Hsueh, on the other hand, is claiming that he never promised to leave a decision on the redevelopment attorney entirely up to council. “In this form of government, the mayor has the authority to recommend the appointees,” Hsueh said, also pointing to minutes from the meeting that mention the mayor’s role in the process.
In addition, he pointed to wording in the July 23 resolution that states, “West Windsor Township will retain another law firm for redevelopment legal services upon a public interview process and recommendation by the mayor to council.”
Hsueh says he feels very strongly about the two candidates he recommended because “through all the interviews, I compromised with the council, letting the council president (Will Anklowitz)” also sit in on the process. Throughout the course of the process, there was a consensus between everyone involved in those interviews that those two candidates were the best for the job, Hsueh added.
Anklowitz said as far as the redevelopment attorney matter is concerned, “I believe we’re not all in agreement with regard to whose best.” But, he says he doesn’t yet know who he will want to hire as an attorney because there is some more information “that the administration is cooperating to get for us,” which includes information on campaign contributions by all five law firms. The township’s pay-to-play ordinance forbids township professionals from having made contributions to township officials and even to county organizations, whether they are located in Mercer County or another county in the state, Anklowitz said. “Right now, I need more information to say finally or for sure which firm or firms I think are best for the township,” he emphasized.
Morgan echoed this, saying, “we have not received full disclosure forms from any of them. We may find none of them are qualified,” because they all have, in some way made contributions to a county or township organization.
All five law firms, Morgan says, are pretty good in their own ways, but council still has to be cautious when picking a candidate, including making sure that candidate “won’t create political issues.”
For example, one of the candidates is a mayor from another New Jersey town, he said. “Every time that individual were to give us an opinion that favored the mayor here, it would be colored,” Morgan said. “Some of us think that would not be such a good idea. It puts him in a difficult position, and it puts us in a difficult position.”
Still, Morgan said based on his conversations with other council members, what may end up happening is that council will pass the resolution selecting the attorney it prefers, which is not one of the mayor’s two recommendations. However, since the council cannot hire an attorney without the mayor negotiating and signing the contract, it will simply only be able to ask him to sign that contract, leaving the outcome in the mayor’s hands. If the mayor refuses to sign off on the measure, a stalemate will occur, he says.
It is still unclear, though, whether the measure is definitely going to be up for a vote on February 25, Morgan says, as he is scheduled to be out of town on business, and will have to miss the meeting, taking his vote away from the majority. “The council president may defer it a week or two for me to be here, unless there’s a clean indication without my being there the council is going to have a majority to move forward,” he said.
Under the Faulkner Act form of government, the council has no authority to negotiate or sign contracts. The only authority it has is to stop the mayor from approving someone he wants, Morgan explained. “Both the mayor and the council have limited powers in that sense,” he added. “It takes both of them to hire a professional.”
At the same time, Morgan said he has devoted numerous hours to studying redevelopment law to see if a resolution designating the council as the redevelopment entity — a measure he introduced in January — would give the council some power with regard to choosing the redevelopment attorney.
That research includes determining the definition of a “governing body,” as it applies to the redevelopment entity, and whether that signifies the council or the mayor.
Morgan has taken issue with Herbert’s interpretation that a redevelopment entity includes the mayor, “a usual predicament I find myself in,” Morgan said.”
So far, Morgan says he has found that “it’s not settled law. That means the ambiguities in the law could lead to lawsuit, which I want to avoid.” Still, “it’s very much a work in progress.”
Even with all of these technicalities, Morgan says “we can spend a lot less time if the mayor would just work with us. We could save a ton of money, a ton of aggravation, and a ton of time.”
The mayor “voted to send redevelopment back to council when he voted on the Planning Board,” Morgan added. “He reached a compromise with us on the attorney thing. It’s time for him to step up.”
Hsueh maintains that he feels the resolution, in addition to the nature of the Faulkner Act form of government, gives him the authority to appoint somebody. “To me, I think it is a matter of principle for this form of government.”
When asked if he would again consider filing litigation, he said, “I think I will stick to my principles, just like what I did last time. It’s not just for myself. It’s to protect the system. The system has procedures and has a clear definition of who is supposed to do what. I don’t want to make it easy now, and then the mayor’s in the future will not be able to function.”
