Your article in the June 26 edition “$36.5 M Budget Adopted; WW Looks for Cuts in `10” does not live up to your usual accuracy standards. I would like to correct the record.
I did not “read a memo Township Attorney Michael Herbert sent to council highlighting state laws as they pertain to the legality of a community nonprofit” as stated in the article. Mr. Herbert has not given us a memo highlighting state laws. Rather, I referenced Mr. Herbert’s previous statements that it is illegal under the Municipal Land Use Law for West Windsor to establish a community nonprofit.
I then referred to a May 15 e-mail from Mr. Herbert in which he said “that a 501(c)(3) corporation could not be used to assume normal government operations because the State Law would not permit it.” I then mentioned Mr. Herbert’s June 3 memorandum that did not say what his e-mail said it would say — rather, it says that a 501(c)(3) organization can be used in the way I have suggested. I asked Mr. Herbert during the meeting to confirm that he now agreed that we could do what I had been suggesting all along. Mr. Herbert confirmed that he now agrees with me.
You quote me as saying “that a board can even be elected to run the nonprofit, but none of those elected to serve on the foundation can be governmental officials.” That is not quite what I said. I was referring to the ways we could meet the requirement that a 501(c)(3) organization that is “closely affiliated with government” must be “controlled by state or local government” while complying with the requirement that it not be an “integral part” of government.
What I said was that the control requirement could be achieved by the election of a nonprofit board that would not comprise elected government officials. The “government control” required by the tax rules could be met by the public election of that board from among the general public. It is, however, perfectly alright for West Windsor elected officials to serve on the board and thereby meet the requirement of West Windsor control over the 501(c)(3) organization.
You assert that I “filed a complaint with the state Attorney General’s office and Mercer County prosecutor, alleging that Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh and Linda Geevers encouraged Chief Financial Officer Joanne Louth and Business Administrator Chris Marion to knowingly include errors in their analysis of his proposal.”
I have NOT made that assertion.
I have alleged that the draft Louth memo contains serious errors of fact and that I immediately objected to any release of the draft until the errors were corrected, given that an election was imminent. I also alleged that Hsueh refused to direct Louth and Marion to work with me to correct the errors and that his refusal put them in an awkward position of being insubordinate if they did work with me. Further, I alleged that Hsueh and Geevers facilitated the release of the draft containing those errors for their own selfish political reasons, thus reinforcing the insubordination problem for Louth and Marion. Finally, I alleged that Hsueh and Geevers used the errors in their campaign materials and that their actions constituted the illegal use of staff for a political campaign.
I have been denied an opportunity to sit down with Louth and review the errors in the draft because Hsueh refused to permit such a meeting and because of Louth’s apparent reluctance to act in a way that could be perceived as insubordinate.
The draft memo has not been put into final form. By denying me the opportunity to review the errors with Louth and have a corrected final memo released, Hsueh and Geevers are continuing to use those errors for their selfish political ends and compounding their violation of New Jersey law.
Hsueh’s and Geevers’ refusal to direct Louth to work with me is not good government and does not serve the best interests of the West Windsor community. The reason they continue that refusal is obvious: They don’t want to suffer the public embarrassment of seeing the errors corrected, and they don’t want to face the reality that they used those errors in their political campaign in violation of New Jersey law.
You quote me as saying that “I’m still waiting for a meeting, and answers to my draft response.” It is true that I am still waiting for a meeting. It is not true that I have given them a draft response. They cannot give me answers to a draft response that does not exist. I am waiting for a meeting to review the errors in the Louth memo, some of which you have again quoted in your article, so that all of us can see a final memo that corrects those errors.
It’s time that Hsueh and Geevers stopped playing politics to the detriment of our taxpayers. The election is over. It is time that Hsueh and Geevers came clean and stopped misrepresenting my proposal. It is time for Hsueh to direct Louth to sit down with me, listen to my concerns about the errors in her memo, and issue a corrected memo.
by Charles C. Morgan
