The Trentonian sues city for meetings without notice
TRENTON » Talk about adequate notice.
The Trentonian has taken legal action against the City of Trenton this week, alleging the capital city violated the Open Public Meetings Act by holding an infamous May 2 teleconference best known for the sexually explicit verbal grenades launched by West Ward Councilwoman Robin Vaughn.
Mayor Reed Gusciora and a majority of Trenton City Council discussed official business in a phone call loaded with personal insults, including Vaughn’s rhetorical haymaker ordering East Ward Councilman Joe Harrison to perform oral sex on the openly gay mayor.
The audio from the powwow confirms the elected officials got together via telephone to discuss the coronavirus public health emergency, among other matters, all done without the benefit of public notice. The de facto secret meeting ultimately devolved into a shouting match generating international headlines: Vaughn accused Gusciora of being a drug addict; the mayor called the councilwoman an “idiot,” “child,” “little a**hole,” and suggested that she needed a lobotomy; and Harrison called her “ugly.”
During the verbal exchange, Vaughn flexed her potty mouth muscles by telling Councilman Harrison to suck Gusciora’s “d**k” and alleging the mayor is a “pedophile” who runs “young boys” through City Hall.
In a civil-action complaint filed Monday in Mercer County Superior Court, The Trentonian accuses the capital city of violating the so-called Sunshine Law and Open Public Records Act by holding several unadvertised public meetings and failing to release the audio recordings of these remote COVID-19 meetings under OPRA.
The Trentonian demands judgment against Trenton’s governing body, asking the Superior Court to prevent the city from ever again hosting an unauthorized public meeting and requiring the city to make “reasonably comprehensible minutes” available of each and every council meeting that has occurred without adequate notice. The litigation further demands an order for the defendants to pay all costs of suit and attorney fees.
CJ Griffin, a seasoned attorney from the law firm Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, filed the verified complaint on behalf of the newspaper.
“What we heard on that May 2nd call was an absolute failure of government officials to put aside their petty differences and rise to the occasion to guide the City of Trenton through this very serious public health and economic crisis,” Griffin said Tuesday via email. “The residents of Trenton deserve a functioning government and not the misogynistic and homophobic insults that these public officials were lodging at each other during a secret meeting that violated the Open Public Meetings Act.”
The OPMA, better known as New Jersey’s Sunshine Law, says “no public body shall hold a meeting unless adequate notice thereof has been provided to the public” and that “all meetings of public bodies shall be open to the public at all times,” among other parameters of open government.