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Health & Fitness

On Bullying, Insinuations, and Dark Humor

I find myself embroiled in a public dispute with the mayor, the town attorney, a local editor, at least one council member, the town public information officer, and, apparently, someone who runs a "positive-only" Facebook group that I'm no longer even a member of. 

In a Patch blog on Wednesday, Councilman Cirilo proclaimed that "the bullying, insinuations, and dark humor must stop." 

Now, it's true that I engaged a lawyer to fight the administration's unconstitutional cease-and-desist letter, and that council members are talking about how partisan I am without even reading the website I made. 

But it seems Councilman Cirilo means that I'm the bully. How can I not find some dark humor in that?

In all seriousness, I'll take a moment to apologize to Mr. Cirilo for not telling him ahead of time what I was going to say. Not for the words themselves -- they still make complete sense -- but if I had told him what I intended to say and why, he might not have felt it was an attack. I also thank him for his apology regarding the cease-and-desist letter, though that wasn't his obligation and I've still heard nothing from the administration.

The context of Councilman Cirilo's blog post were my remarks to the Council on Tuesday, June 25. I was discussing an email that the mayor sent me, before my lawyer's response went viral, which claimed that he authorized the cease-and-desist letter on behalf of "members of the Public Relations Commission". This was clearly untrue: The members of the PRC who were current at the time said that they hadn't gone to the mayor, the chairman didn't even know about the website before I spoke to him about the letter, and at public comment on Tuesday, Public Information Officer Jessica Glicker told the council that she had asked the mayor to send the letter.

A question follows naturally: If the mayor is willing to lie in little things, why should we trust him in bigger ones?

Here's one example of several that I used in my comments: "When the mayor first wanted to start a marketing program, he said we should use Catania Consulting. They do gaming consulting for casinos, and don’t even mention marketing as one of their services on their website. Yet the mayor insisted that this was the right company to do the marketing work. They’re also connected through Councilman Cirilo’s wife to Congressman Bill Pascrell. Why should we trust the mayor with respect to politically connected companies?"

Councilman Cirilo was offended, saying that I "insinuated that my [Cirilo's] wife was somewhat connected to a firm and that a quid pro quo may exist between a company seeking Township business and my wife."

Let's be careful with our language here: I'm not insinuating that there was anything improper going on. But sure, we always have to worry about improper things that might be going on. And the councilman knows this, because that's the reason he recused himself from those proceedings.

In other words, my comment wasn't an attack on the councilman's wife. It was a clear example of a time when the entire Council should have called for greater scrutiny and transparency, because there were close personal relationships between our government and the companies we were buying services from. 

Understand, I'm not saying that the town should only hire people whom nobody knows. If I were mayor and I had legal needs, one of the first people I'd call is Stephen Kaplitt. But I would owe the town a precise description of why he would be right for the job: education, experience, prior winning cases in that branch of law, and so on.

I chose my phrasing carefully here: I would owe the town that much. Transparency is what the town deserves.

I confess, it bothers me that the councilman responded with such pearl-clutching outrage. If politicians get offended when we ask straightforward questions about political connections, they're creating an environment that's hostile to good governance. They make it sound like requests for transparency are personal, negative, and even treasonous. 

It's always in the town's best interests to check out politically connected companies that we want to hire, even if we completely trust our current slate of administrators and legislators -- because the next slate might be less trustworthy, and we want to hold them to a standard of high transparency, too. 

Unless, of course, we're to believe that everyone is always trustworthy. In politics. In New Jersey. 

Now, although Councilman Cirilo called his post "In Defense of My Wife," he also touched on the way that I'm allegedly bullying three other people, and he called me out for my "partisan site". I may follow up with full blog posts on those things, but for now I will make the following suggestions:

1. Before telling me to "stop this bullying campaign," I suggest he get more information. He might start by talking to me directly, but he could include other past and present members of the PRC. He might read the second half of this article on Baristanet, which talks about the way in which one of the women I'm supposedly bullying threatened my wife's special-needs advocacy group. Ask for specifics -- I know that, for my part, I can provide plenty.

2. My single-page website isn't partisan at all, and the forum that it links to is no worse than the nj.com forum I intended to replace. Unfortunately, open discussion, like transparency, is often seen as partisanship in this town. So much the worse for West Orange.

There's no doubt more to say, but I've already gone on too long. If anyone has questions, please ask them in the comments or on the forum and I'll try to reply.

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