In a previous op-ed piece, I explained the importance of township council members having access to pertinent information from the township administration in order to make informed decisions for the benefit of West Windsor residents. I noted Mayor Hsueh’s frequent stonewalling of council by refusing to provide requested information in a timely manner. I suggested an obvious solution to the problem –– adopting an ordinance requiring the mayor to provide such information in writing within a reasonable period of time, a request he has subsequently refused despite its obvious benefits to the community.
My op-ed also outlined the reasons why I have a fiduciary duty to sue the mayor when the mayor ignores his own fiduciary duty by obstructing a council person’s fiduciary duty to make informed votes on behalf of residents.
Since then, a number of people have asked me to give examples of the mayor’s intransigence and further clarify the status of our current litigation.
Council has been subjected to repeated instances in which key information has been either withheld or misrepresented by the mayor and his administrator. The result has been that council has made decisions on proposals from the administration with either incomplete knowledge or under false pretenses.
One example is a resolution designating the redevelopment area as a transit village, which the administration put on the council agenda on June 14, 2010. This resolution came as a complete surprise since many residents would want to debate the wisdom of such a designation.
When I requested that we defer the resolution so that we could get more information about its purpose, the administration insisted on immediate approval by council. They asserted we would miss the deadline for a grant if we did not pass the resolution that evening. The resolution passed, 4-1.
After the vote, I asked for information about the grant, including a copy of the application and the deadline for submission. I made repeated requests for that information that were ignored. Finally, after nearly five months of waiting for an answer, I filed an OPRA request on November 12. The administration responded on December 9 that there was no grant deadline. Rather, there had been a preliminary meeting on January 22, 2010 to discuss an application for transit village designation. The deadline was a deadline for the transit village designation application, not a deadline for a grant application.
Council passed that resolution under false pretenses. Given its misrepresentation from the mayor and administrator upon which council relied in approving it, I have to ask whether the resolution passed by council was even legal. I also have to ask why the resolution was not brought to council in February, March or April instead of at the last minute on June 14 with an immediate, urgent deadline. The answer is obvious –– Mayor Hsueh did not want the application for transit village designation to be disclosed and debated by concerned residents.
A more current and continuing misrepresentation involves the status of my litigation against Mayor Hsueh to enforce his fiduciary obligation to provide information to council. The mayor and his supporters would have people believe that I have filed four lawsuits. The truth is that I have filed only two lawsuits and there has only been only one decision –– a split decision, not the four rulings against me that Mayor Hsueh and his friends have touted in the press. That decision affirmed Mayor Hsueh’s fiduciary duty to respond to council requests.
John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
These are the facts no matter how hard Mayor Hsueh and his friends would like to alter them: He has repeatedly stalled or refused to give council access to the information it needs to make informed decisions. When he has given information to council, he has misrepresented the facts (as in the case of the transit village designation resolution). He has seriously misrepresented my intentions in continuing to seek legal confirmation of his obligation to provide accurate information. And he has confused my criminal allegations (not lawsuits) with my lawsuits about his fiduciary obligations to council.
I did not file my request for a criminal investigation until after I retained a former prosecutor to advise me whether crimes had, in fact, been committed. He confirmed that, yes, Hsueh had violated criminal law but it was unlikely that the Attorney General’s office would pursue those crimes given the existing political climate (the mayor and I were not playing on a level playing field, there being a Democratic Governor at the time, a Democratic County Executive and Mayor Hsueh being a Democrat ) and given resource priorities.
My former-prosecutor advisor was correct about the playing field being tilted in favor of the mayor. The Attorney General’s office declined to file a complaint. After finding that they had not been given key information by the persons they interviewed, I asked a court to give me a probable cause hearing so that those facts could be brought to light. The court declined.
The criminal matters never resulted in any complaints being filed or any docket numbers being assigned. Consequently, there were no lawsuits and no court decisions regarding the actual status of those crimes. The simple reality is that neither the Attorney General’s office nor the court wanted to devote scarce resources to my criminal allegations arising from an election. We all know that prosecutors do not expend resources pursuing crimes that, in fact, are crimes when there are more egregious crimes to pursue.
I have carried the burden of bringing the lawsuits about Hsueh’s fiduciary obligation to provide information to council without any financial support from West Windsor Township. I have not had the benefit of a law firm to assist me even though I have brought the lawsuits as part of my job as a council person. I am the one spending my own personal funds and my own time for the benefit of taxpayers while the mayor is using tax dollars to defend his obstruction of informed votes. Despite not being able to play against the mayor on a level playing field, I am pursuing my right to appeal the issues I did not win in the split decision (the only court ruling so far).
I am confident that I will establish that Mayor Hsueh’s refusals to respond to requests for information were, in fact, violations of his fiduciary duties. His fiduciary duties are so obvious and the fact that he has withheld information is so irrefutable, that I am confident that the court of appeals will rule in my favor eventually based on the following judgment rendered by the New Jersey Supreme Court, quoting the U.S. Supreme Court:
“Experience has taught that mere requests for . . . information often are unavailing, and also that information which is volunteered is not always accurate or complete; so some means of compulsion are essential to obtain what is needed . . . State courts quite generally have held that the power to legislate carries with it by necessary implication ample authority to obtain information needed in the rightful exercise of that power, and to employ compulsory process for the purpose.”
Still, as I stated in my earlier op-ed piece, I will drop all litigation if council amends the West Windsor ordinance by requiring that the mayor provide information in writing to council members upon request so that they can perform their fiduciary duty to make informed votes on behalf of the community.
An amended ordinance will be an important step toward establishing an open township government based on a constructive working relationship between administration and council. The issue is bigger than council president Hsueh and Mayor Carson in 1996 when Hsueh tried to use compulsory process against a mayor and bigger than me and Mayor Hseuh in 2011 when I am trying to use compulsory process against a mayor.
Either my prevailing in the lawsuits or amendment of the ordinance is for the benefit of West Windsor. That is why the issue is important.
Editor’s note: This piece is a follow-up to an op ed by Councilman Morgan that appeared originally in the Times of Trenton and was reprinted in the July 8 edition of the News.
