Who will be the next Cumberland County Counsel?

The News has an article pondering the replacement for Gary Wodlinger for the position of county counsel. One thing is certain, whoever is selected will be a hard-core Democrat. Now this is not peculiar to Cumberland County, the entire state is screwed up in that it allows heavy contributors to eventually receive pay-back for their dedication.

The systems rewards those that contribute to partisan political interests, whether Republican or Democrat. The system is broken. For instance, the news story claims that three people are in line for the position.

Three local lawyers – Robert Malestein, Brendan Kavanagh and Arnold Robinson – were interviewed earlier this year, with one of the three most likely to be chosen Thursday to head the county’s legal department.

Brendan Kavanaugh, besides signing off on a letter sent to all registered Democrats in the county that was a blatant lie and acting as Lou’s campaign manager contributed monetarily to the CCDO last year. Kavanaugh also contributed to Lou’s secret NACo slush fund.

Arnold Robinson, prominent Millville Attorney is another hard-core Democrat. Robinson also contributed to Magazzu’s slush fund, and like Kavanaugh has benefited from almost $100,000 in county legal work in the past couple of years.

I have to  with Jane Christy and Jennifer Swift that possibly it is time for the county to create its own legal department and hire, according to civil service rules and not as a result of political favors, a legal department. The county spends millions on legal fees annually, and I am certain that we could cut costs significantly with a full-time team that is not billing by the hour.

And finally we come to a name that may not be as well-known to our readers, Robert Malestein. He has been acting as interim counsel until the Freeholders could appoint a replacement for Wodlinger, now a Superior Court Judge. In my opinion, Gary is doing a fine job as judge.

The interesting thing about Malestein is that he does not turn up on ELEC.  However he too contributed to Lou’s slush fund. So it appears that the only way to be selected for this position is to have supported Lou’s failed run for NACo, in addition to being a  hard-core Democrat.

One has to wonder, with the county’s attorneys being so blatantly partisan, if it is possible for a Republican to receive fair treatment or judgment? I have no proof one way or the other – I am just pondering.

It took a little more digging before I discovered another thing about Malestein. According to Findlaw, he was affiliated with the law firm of Lipman, Antonelli, Batt, Dunlap etc.  They too are heavy contributors to the local and state Democratic parties, both as a law firm, and as individuals within the law firm.

Now am I implying that anything illegal is happening here? of course not, we are in New Jersey where this sort of quid-pro-quo is the standard order of business. You cannot possibly get a position such as this at the county level without first contributing to the “correct” political party – that is the party that is in power, or being there supporting the party that will be in power.

That, my friends, is something that should concern everyone. With absurd amounts of money being spent on outside legal assistance, including hundreds of thousands to firms in North Jersey and from Norcross’s Camden and Gloucester Counties, it sees that our tax dollars are being squandered to repay political favors. I don’t think Lou will be in any rush to create a county legal department that would save taxpayers hundreds of thousands annually, it would take away his ability to provide even more favors to those that support his organization, and his own private bank account (if indeed the Lou 4 NACo bank account was in his own name and not a PAC as he tried to claim).

Lou Ignores the Law

I recently alluded to the Rainear-Pepitone campaign from 2007, and Lou’s ignoring the law.

The image to the left is a screen capture of the campaign video posted on YouTube by Travis (Horne).

As you can see, the treasurer of the EPO Rainear/Pepitone was none other than Lou Magazzu, who was also Chair of the Cumberland County Democratic organization.

This is just one more instance of Lou Magazzu ignoring the law, pretending that it was intended for everybody else other than himself.

N.J. Stat. § 19:44A-9

§ 19:44A-9. Candidate, joint candidates committees; reports; requirements

…b. (1) The candidate or candidates, as the case may be, shall file with the Election Law Enforcement Commission a certificate of organization on a form prescribed by the commission. The certificate shall identify the name of the committee, which shall be the sole name under which the committee receives contributions, makes expenditures and otherwise does business…

No person serving as the chairman of a political party committee or a legislative leadership committee shall be eligible to be appointed or to serve as the treasurer of a candidate committee or joint candidates committee, other than a candidate committee or joint candidates committee established to further the nomination for election or the election of that person as a candidate for public office.

The emphasis is mine. What this statute makes quite clear is that Lou Magazzu violated N.J. Stat. § 19:44A-9 by acting as treasurer of the Rainear-Pepitone campaign. The penalty for ignoring this law is fairly steep… “not more than $ 6,000 for the first offense and not more than $ 12,000 for the second and each subsequent offense.”

I am personally hoping that I can find other offenses to increase the penalty. Anne Milgram announced she will not serve as State Attorney General under Christie, so maybe we will have an AG that doesn’t look the other way at corruption in the state.

 

Conflict?

This is an interesting vote by our current slate of Magazzu-picked Freeholders. This was emailed to me by a long time fan of this website, and while it is not specific to Lou Magazzu, it does illustrate how Magazzu’s hand-picked compatriots fail to understand “the appearance of impropriety” or what a “conflict of interest” is.

Bill Whelan works for Colonial Bank for $163,000 a year salary and compensation. Edward Geletka is Bill Whelan’s boss at Colonial Bank. Bill Whelan did not abstain from voting for Ed Geletka’s wife as a member of the County Board of Health.

I suppose in the strictest sense, this is not as much of a conflict of interest as it would be if any of the Freeholders voted for (or against) a family member. However, since Bill’s source of income is involved, this refusal to abstain gives me an uneasy feeling.

I sit on a few boards of directors, and will more readily abstain than vote if there is even a hint that a conflict of interest might be construed.

Resolution Appointing Members of the Cumberland County Board of Health
Legislative File # RES-2009-414
Status – Adopted
Department – Health Department
Meeting – 7/20/2009 5:00:00 PM
Category – Appointments & Reappointments

 

Vote
James Dunkins	Initiator	Yes/Aye
Jane Jannarone	Seconder	Yes/Aye
Joseph Riley	Voter	Absent
Nelson Thompson	Voter	Yes/Aye
William Whelan	Voter	Yes/Aye
Joseph Pepitone	Voter	Yes/Aye
Louis Magazzu	Voter	Yes/Aye

 

Body:

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE BOARD OF CHOSEN FREEHOLDERS  OF THE COUNTY OF CUMBERLAND, as follows:

That the following persons are hereby appointed as members of the Cumberland County Board of Health for a term of three (3) years, each of said terms to commence on August 1, 2009        and to expire on July 31, 2012:

Leona Salvatore, Bridgeton

Ann Marie Geletka, Upper Deerfield

Passed and adopted at a regular meeting of the Board of Chosen Freeholders held at the Cumberland County Administration Building, 790 East Commerce Street, Bridgeton, New Jersey on Monday, July 20, 2009 at 5:00 p.m. prevailing time.

Quid Pro Quo

In 2008, Archer & Greiner gave $7,800 to the campaign of Mr. Magazzu’s hand picked candidates, Jannarone, Dunkins and Whelan.

In January 2009, the Cumberland County Board of Freeholders awarded Archer & Greiner a contract for eminent domain counsel services.

You wash Lou’s hands, he will wash yours.

Sjogren’s Untruth

I didn’t bring this up prior to the election, but since Jack Hummel wrote about it, I will bring it up here, post election. During the campaign, Wade Sjogren said that he has never run for office before. Several people asked why I didn’t bring that up on the forum, or why others didn’t bring it up.

My main reason for not bringing it up is that I didn’t hear it. I believe it was stated during one of the radio broadcasts, and I don’t have a radio that has any reception in the house. The alarm clock-radio does get very nice static, but that’s about all.

My thoughts? It doesn’t surprise me that someone running as a team-mate on a political team that is built on lies would fall into the culture. Wade did in fact run for office prior to his run for Freeholder. He was possibly embarrassed to bring it up because, as I understand it, he ran for Bridgeton City Council. I understand he only got 846 votes, coming in 2nd to last.

It’s sort of the same of being raised a fundamentalist Christian and meeting a girl in a bar. You don’t brag about your roots!

Travis Horne

On Lou’s NACo expenditures accounting is a $200 expense to Travis Horne.  Travis was paid on 11/19/07.

If you go to YouTube and search for Doug Rainear, you will scroll and find a video that Travis Horne (aka T Bob McCoy)  made for Rainear and Pepitone for Freeholder in 07.

I’m wondering if the $200 paid to Travis Horne was really for the Rainear/Pepitone campaign rather than for NACo.

Did Lou need to show expenditures totaling $80,000 and pull this out of a hat?

Another strange thing is Lou’s name is listed at the end of the video as campaign treasurer at the same time he was county chair. This might be an item for the attorney general to look into.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

The election is over, and now the papers are full of articles explaining the results. I may as well join in. The Daily Journal had two articles that are enjoyable reading.

One article interviews the winners and losers. Lou Magazzu, winner of the Freeholder race, is still playing martyr:

I had the greatest personal attack that anyone has had to undertake…

Poor baby! Now he knows how the people that have been on the receiving end of his attacks feel. I was one of them. I ma happy that his life was uncomfortable for a while. And I suspect it will continue to be uncomfortable. You see, you can’t offer the county for sale to the highest bidder and not raise ire.

Bob Greco, chairman of the Republican Organization sees the results as a referendum that the voters want to see diversity on the board.

It’s absolutely a message of people want diversity on that board…

This is a point that Lou has repeatedly railed against (under his pen name tryagain on these forums). Lou insists that Republicans in the county do not deserve any representation in County government. Lou outspent Republicans by a tremendous margin. Jon Corzine helped finance buses to bus people to the polls. The unions had 700 workers flooding the streets (of mainly non-home-owning, property tax paying citizens) bringing them to the polls. In Fairfield, Democrats illegally campaigned at the polls, escorting voters into the polls, and Democrat poll workers ignored the law. Thankfully one of our regular readers called the attorney on duty that day, and sheriff’s officers were called out to disburse the illegal campaign activity.

Despite the highly organized and financed campaign (most of that money came from Jon Corzine and Camden and Gloucester Counties) the Democrats were still unable to sweep. The two winners won by slim margins. Lou’s reelection was anything but a mandate, and it may be an indicator that his iron-fisted rule in the county has ended.

Independent Democrat Jennifer Swift quipped:

“I’m surprised there is such a big difference between Corzine’s vote and Lou’s, which tells you something,” Swift said. “They were willing to vote for a Democratic governor, but not carry it through.”

We stated earlier that candidate for clerk Lauren Van Embden got more votes than Lou.  And Lou still seemed to miss the point:

Magazzu, the top vote-getter in the freeholder race, said his opponents made the election a referendum on him. That was a mistake when there were issues like taxes to pound on, he said.

In fact, one of the major topics of this website has been taxes. Taxes and ethics. Lou does not find ethics to be an issue. It appears that his opinion is that you can do whatever you want, whether ethical or otherwise, as long as you benefit personally.

We have pounded the issue – county taxes INCREASED by almost 100% in the past six years under his rule. He refuses to accept the fact that spending is also an issue, tossing money around like confetti, increasing county spending at an alarming rate. The more you spend, the more you have to raise through taxation. And as has been pointed out repeatedly, everyone has seen a property tax increase in this county, on their county portion of the tax bill. Perhaps it it time to require that landlords present their renters with quarterly statements showing what portion of their rent goes to local taxes.

The other article in the Daily Journal summed it up in a nutshell:

The National Election Pool/Edison Research conducted exit polls Tuesday with resultsanalyzed by the Monmouth University Polling Institute for the Gannett New Jersey newspapers. The survey found that leading the issues for voters were the economy and jobs, property taxes, corruption and health care.

The county can make little impact on the subject of Health Care. The prescription cards are a red herring. Every pharmacy has their own version, and you can find dozens of free alternatives online. Lou did not have to spend thousands of tax dollars to fly to NACo conferences (none of the 2008 expenditures for his NACo campaign have been reimbursed to the county as far as I can tell) and spends thousands more advertising (that was just an end-run to allow Lou to campaign on public money). All prescription cards are basically the same. However, it is interesting to note that CareMark, the entity behind our cards has been in legal troubles for various reasons including giving out personal information of its clients.

However, jobs, taxes and corruption can ALL be addressed at the county level, and Lou has failed miserably on every count. And it is for these reasons that MagazzuWatch will continue to exist. As long as Lou is in charge of county Democratic politics, any Democrat that runs will come under scrutiny, and will be assumed to carry on Lou’s legacy and mission.

Camden Prisoners Move to Cumberland — A Camden Gift to Lou, or Vice Versa?

One of our readers reports that despite Lou’s vow that Cumberland would not accept prisoners from Camden’s closed Riverfront prison, they have indeed arrived.  The report from inside the corrections system is that all three prisons in the county — South Woods, Bayside, and Southern State, have received Camden prisoners and officers.  In addition, there has been some prisoner juggling.  South Woods prison in Bridgeton had to move out part of a federally funded behavioral modification program (it moved to Southern State) in order to receive more Camden prisoners at South Woods.  The reporter says:

Along with shuffling inmates around inside the system they also began an aggressive campaign to move inmates to half way houses around the state along with granting parole to inmates to make room.

So what happened to Lou’s promise that the county would not receive new prisoners?  Why haven’t our local papers been on this story?  Riverfront was scheduled to close in July.  Hasn’t anyone been curious about where the prisoners have gone?    Has this story been hushed up so it wouldn’t be an election issue?  Just wondering.  If anyone has more info, chime in.

Some Victories, Some Defeats

After working behind the scenes in creating this website since December 2008, helping to moderate, collecting stories from various sources and even posting under my own moniker often, the keys have been handed over to me to be the public face of Magazzu Watch.

I am proud to say that I believe that we did influence this election. Lou did not win by the landslide that he would have had we not existed. I heard reports that Lou was going apoplectic last night, riding that roller coaster ride, waiting for the final results.  He had to campaign hard, he had to stick to issues and lay off the negative mudslinging that has been his trademark. MW acted as the bad guy, bringing out facts and information, forcing Lou to run a kinder, gentler campaign.

I believe that MW can take some credit for the excellent choice of  Tom Sheppard sliding in and breaking the 7-0 hold. My friend Rick Tonetta easily beat Wade Sjogren.  Sam gave Nelson a run for his money. Hopefully Nelson will work less for his Camden unions and more for the unemployed workers in Cumberland County. I am still waiting for an answer to the question of the union worker that asked why our jobs are going to Camden and Philly residents? “That’s the way it is done” does not cut it. Our residents deserve support and advocacy from Nelson, whether or not they are union members.

I find it especially amusing that Lauren Van Embden got more votes than Lou. She did quite well for a novice in her first campaign. Hopefully this election will not have soured her in pursuing a career in public service. Maybe she will run as Freeholder, but not with a Louser as a running mate. Come’on Lauren, come over to the dark side. Become a Republican! ‘-)

The question was raised that if Lou lost, what would happen to the Watch? There are plenty of politicians to watch, regardless of the outcome. I would like to think that the watch had quite a bit to do with last evening’s numbers. Lou won, as all of us behind the scenes suspected would happen. The one thing you cannot combat is name recognition. As a friend once told me, “Magazzu is the politician people love to hate.”

The name of our website I am sure helped him get as many votes as it hurt. As they say, there is no such thing as “bad publicity”, unless you are a terrorist or sexual predator. Lou is neither. Lou is merely a vindictive, self-serving person. The county benefits from his action solely as a by-product of his wheeling and dealing and buying and selling political favors.  The fact is, Lou is the epitome of a political boss, and he does that well. The problem with this sort of governing is that there is a large portion of the public that gets disenfranchised because they are not part of the political machine.

So, MW is not going anywhere. I hope to make it more civil. To start, the first course of action was to lock down the comments protocol. Lou under his pen name refused to abide by the rules. Many other posters did tread onto territory that we would rather have been avoided. So for the time being, there is a registration process required.

This is a registration with WordPress.com, and not this site.  I do not see your personal information when you create an account. However, you will need to have a valid email account to complete registration. I will continue to be able to see your IP address, and your email if you decide to post.

Magazzu Watch will continue to follow Lou’s actions. I still want answers as to who paid for Lou’s 2008 NACo campaign. There are thousands of dollars unaccounted for. Tom Sheppard will help me get to the bottom of those old debts, and hopefully we can force Lou to repay the county.

There is also a question about money paid to Travis Horne in 2007. Are Lou’s books in order? The $81,000 in ‘gifts’ to Lou’s personal bank account will not go away. The question of the personal loan from the CCDO will linger. We now have friends in state government that will not impede investigations and protect their own. As New Jersey gets a new attorney General, perhaps we will see an increased interest in the dubious shenanigans in the county.

I will continue to follow the Democrat Freeholders that are working with Lou. I will continue to follow the money trails. I trust that my cohorts behind the scenes will continue to contribute periodically. You will not be seeing daily updates, but only important news and coverage of Freeholder meetings.

I want to personally thank everyone that got out and voted yesterday, and all of those too numerous to name that assisted with this site for helping to make Lou’s election day a tortuous and stressful event.

Carl B. Johnson

Lou, Get a Clue

Looks as if Magazzu didn’t get all he wanted in the election.  Most revealing was his victory speech to his supporters last night.  It focused primarily on his anger at the Independent Leaders; he holds them responsible for Sjogen’s defeat (also for Van Embden’s defeat, even though they did not run anyone against her).

He and Thompson both went on about the “renegades” and their motivation, “hate”.  I’ve been thinking about “hate”.  It’s a powerful tag to put on those who oppose you.  It implies irrationality, lack of reason.  Thing is, Lou’s opponents’ strong aversion (better than the emotionally laden word “hate”) is solidly grounded in rationality.  Just before the election, I listed 81 reasons to vote Lou out of office.  These “Lou Chronicles” together are a compelling reason to dislike Lou, as a public official and as a person.

But Lou will never, ever see this.  Convinced of his own rightness, the only motivation he can ascribe to his opponents is “hate”.  He can’t conceive that he is responsible for his own grief.  Seven of eight former freeholders who worked with him either ran against him or did not support him.  Get a clue, Lou.  Maybe you are not as “right” and virtuous as you think.  But those who know Lou say he will never, ever, see himself as less than perfect.