A week after it was filed, a criminal lawsuit filed by Councilman Charles Morgan against Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh and Councilwoman Linda Geevers Presiding has been dismissed by a Lawrence judge.
Morgan filed criminal charges against them in West Windsor municipal court — the third time he has pursued legal action this past year — but it was forwarded to Municipal Judge Paul Catanese in Lawrence Township to avoid conflicts in West Windsor.
Morgan said he filed the charges on April 6 with the West Windsor municipal court after having been advised by a former prosecutor that he had a case. The charges come three months after he filed a civil suit against the mayor in Mercer County Superior Court claiming that the mayor failed to provide a report that the councilman believes he is entitled to under the township’s Faulkner Act form of government.
The new lawsuit rehashed a complaint Morgan filed last year with the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, in which he claimed Hsueh and Geevers misused township staff during the municipal election.
The original action was taken a week before the May election, in which Morgan ran against Hsueh for the mayoral seat. Morgan filed the complaint with the county prosecutor’s office, alleging that the mayor and Geevers “illegally used West Windsor Township administrative staff, and hence the public money, in furtherance of their political campaign.”
He said that his opponents used township staff to defeat the political arguments he made in his own campaign. He alleged that they coerced then-business administrator Chris Marion and Chief Financial Officer Joanne Louth to perform an analysis of his proposal — that the township use more of its surplus to offset taxes in the budget — ridden with “factual errors.”
Morgan also charged that Geevers illegally asked Township Attorney Michael Herbert for a legal opinion as to whether it was a violation of the law in publicly using the materials put forth by the township professionals in response to council requests, saying Geevers was using the township attorney for campaign advice. He also alleged that Herbert was paid for a conference call with the mayor and Russell Schenkman about the West Windsor Community Foundation, which he alleged was a personal use of township staff by the mayor.
The prosecutor’s office cleared the mayor and Geevers, as well as Herbert.
Morgan said the decisions by the Mercer County prosecutor’s office and the Election Enformencet Division that cleared Hsueh and Geevers of any wrongdoing were “hampered by a lack of resources in dealing with very complicated issues and very subtle issues of law.”
Morgan said he hired a former prosecutor who is an expert in criminal law to review his case before filing the charges in municipal court. “His job was to tell me I was wrong or to revise my complaint in a way that would be more articulate,” he said. “He told me we did need to revise it but that I was making a case that should be heard.”
Geevers said “this is purely dirty politics” and a waste of taxpayer money. Morgan “needs to get over the fact that he lost big time in the last election,” Geevers added. “It would be best for him to move on.”
