When I first read councilman George Borek’s completely out-of-character front-page harangue against council president Bryan Maher (the News, January 9), I was totally amazed. Mr. Borek, who is better known for his demeanor rather than his grasp of fiscal and other council matters, is generally not given to insulting people. So something else must be going on.
As detective Adrian Monk might say, here’s what’s happening. The mayor’s allies on council and in the administration, having little or nothing objective to criticize regarding Mr. Maher’s efficient and effective handling of council business and especially the budget, are resorting instead to personal attacks. In this way they hope to get Mr. Maher to say something he might regret later in the year when the council campaign gets going. This is important to them, as two of the three seats that are up for election are held by the mayor’s allies. Losing even one of them could be catastrophic for their agenda for many years to come, and they know it.
Here are two other examples of unsubtle attempts to get Mr. Maher’s goat. At the last council meeting, Mayor Hsueh said that he had had “problems” with council’s conduct of business in 2014. Mr. Maher could well have responded later by saying that he had had problems with how the mayor runs the administration, but he chose not to.
An even more absurd statement came later from township attorney Mike Herbert. He loudly, repeatedly, and incorrectly insisted that a memo from outside attorney William Kearns regarding his (Mr. Herbert’s) compensation was “attorney-client privileged” which clearly was not the case. As Mr. Herbert ought to know, the attorney-client privilege belongs to the client, not to the attorney. What a client says or writes to an attorney cannot be revealed to others without the client’s permission, but a client (such as Mr. Maher and council in this case) is free to disclose what his attorney says or writes to him unless the attorney has marked it “privileged and confidential.”
According to Mr. Maher, Mr. Kearns’s memo was not marked in this way. As it came on township E-mail, it can clearly be disclosed to the public via a normal OPRA request. My present understanding is that Mr. Herbert has blocked such access, which could be considered a violation of professional ethics. Mr. Herbert, who is a third party, has no standing to claim any privilege whatsoever regarding a memo written by another attorney to that attorney’s client or clients. The client, of course, is that person or persons who engage an attorney and authorize payment, which in this case is township council.
We are likely to see much more of this behavior in the coming months. In desperation, absurd assertions regarding Mr. Maher will be made from the podium, from council and administration opponents, and in the press. But Mr. Maher, as well as the general public, will know what’s happening. In the meantime Mr. Borek should publicly apologize for his ill-considered remarks about Mr. Maher at the upcoming council meeting.
John Church
