Radio host who interviewed Yaede works for Hamilton
HAMILTON >> No wonder he didn’t play hardball with Mayor Kelly Yaede.
WBCB 1490 radio host Joe Fabrizi is on the township’s payroll, The Trentonian has learned.
Sources told the newspaper late Monday night the Yaede administration hired the Democratic operative as an inspector a few weeks ago.
Township business administrator Dave Kenny confirmed that Fabrizi was hired as a part-time building inspector about three weeks ago. He makes between $20 to 25 an hour, Kenny said.
“He was hired one to two days a week to do some investigation of complaints of high grass, weed, debris on property,” Yaede’s trusted lieutenant said by phone Monday night. “[His employment] will end in a couple weeks because it’ll be the end of the high-grass season. We get a lot of highgrass complaints in the spring and the summer.”
Fabrizi failed to disclose his newfound employment with the township when he conducted a hands-off interview with the mayor on Monday afternoon on his “Opinions Matter” show. Fabrizi did, however, take shots at “newspapers” in a Facebook post promoting the interview, questioning the ethics of the publications reporting on the political drama in Hamilton.
He defended the interview with Yaede in a phone interview with this newspaper earlier in the day. Calls to his home phone late Monday night went unreturned.
Kenny called the hiring of the radio host “pretty minor” and accused The Trentonian of making a big deal about Fabrizi’s work with the township to make the mayor look bad.
Kenny called a Trentonian reporter the “most biased” he has interacted with.
“You’re not a reporter. You’re a commentator,” he said.
One of Fabrizi’s longtime friends, Yaede slate mate Vinnie Capodanno, said he didn’t think Fabrizi owed it to anybody to disclose the potential conflict to his listeners when he had Yaede on the show.
“Joe is very straight,” Capodanno said. “His radio show, he just loves politics, and he’s fair to everybody. He’s not up there to slant nothin’.”
Fabrizi has had state and local politicians on his show this year, including Yaede’s challenger, council president Jeff Martin.
Fabrizi’s radio biography identifies him as a lifelong Hamilton resident, and he’s a known Democrat. He is a member of the carpenter’s Local Union 31 and worked as a housing representative for the state Department of Community Affairs.
Capodanno said his friend is “very well qualified” for the inspector gig.
He claimed Fabrizi was one of the mayor’s “hardest critics and still criticizes the mayor. I didn’t think the mayor would even hire him. Joe isn’t going to be comprised by a one-day-a-week job. No way on earth.”
Yaede’s running mate said his friend’s interview style allows candidates to tell their stories without pressing them up.
“He doesn’t come after anybody,” Capodanno said. “I think he’s really, really a very honest guy.”