VOTE ON THE MOVE
Critics decry election ordinance that gives Trenton council, mayor 6 more months in office
TRENTON » The people’s will is being subverted.
Government leaders who are a part of what one resident called possibly the most “dangerous and dysfunctional” epochs in Trenton history are about to award themselves with another six months in office.
Council will vote Thursday on moving the capital city’s nonpartisan election from May to November. If passed, the measure, sponsored by controversial legislator Robin Vaughn, shifts the runoff for mayor and council races to December from June.
The council passed legislation earlier this year that allowed Trentonians to determine by referendum whether to change the election date.
Vaughn’s latest proposal, making it exclusively council’s decision, supplants the previous ordinance.
The move will also extend the terms of Mayor Reed Gusciora and the seven legislators who were sworn into office in July 2018 to the end of 2022.
The public has little say in the matter, as the proposal has the support from a majority of the governing body.
“This seems to be a really hasty push. It feels like we’re being stream-rolled into this,” Caitlin Fair, a North Ward resident who started a petition to stop the governing body from adopting Ordinance 2051, told The Trentonian in a phone interview Wednesday.
The petition had 157 signatures as of 5 p.m.
Fair opposed Vaughn’s bill at Tuesday’s meeting, saying she wasn’t against the idea of moving the election but the consequence that it gives city leaders more time in office to wreak havoc.
‘Trump-Like’ Proposal
Defending the ordinance, Vaughn — one of three city leaders to face a recall effort — touted increased voter turnout and cost savings, estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, as benefits of moving the election date.
Vaughn said the move would make Trenton more “progressive” since it remains the only municipality in Mercer County to still hold its municipal election in May.
Critics contend that city leaders who failed to bring change to New Jersey’s capital after more than two years in office don’t deserve to have their terms extended.
Increased voter turnout isn’t a given, they say, adding the move could effectively turn Trenton’s race into a partisan affair because it will be held at the same time as other county, state and federal races.
At-large councilman Jerell Blakeley, who voted against the original ordinance, called Vaughn’s proposal “Trump-like.”
“Donald Trump has only speculated about extending his term in office. My colleagues are actually going to do it,” Blakeley told The Trentonian.
He previously criticized his arch-nemesis for trying to ease her path to the mayorship if she decides to run against Gusciora in 2022.
Blakeley told The Trentonian that he was not “philosophically opposed” to having a November election but was concerned moving the runoff to December will “depress” voter turnout rather than increase it.
Inclement weather in the winter months may deter older, infirmed Trentonians from going to the polls, and it’s less likely they’ll deal with those pitfalls in the spring, the councilman said.
“This is a poor look,” he said.
Addressing the councilman’s slights, Vaughn suggested it was “super conservative” for anyone to “obstruct” changing the election date.
Vaughn did not respond to a phone call and emailed request for comment on what some residents and the mayor suggested is the real obstructionist move: taking the decision out of the hands of voters.
Gusciora said he doesn’t favor the change to Vaughn’s bill, which if passed, supersedes Ordinance 20-14, also sponsored by Vaughn, that passed March 5 by a 5-2 vote.
Council president Kathy McBride, vice president Marge Caldwell-Wilson, and councilmen George Muschal and Santiago Rodriguez joined Vaughn in support of the change.
Along with the date, Gusciora believes residents should be allowed to decide whether they want “comprehensive” reforms to Trenton’s election, such as staggered terms, also adopted in March, and a shift from nonpartisan to partisan races.
“I do not support the change from ballot question to legislative fiat,” he said by text message.
No More Referendum
Vaughn’s previous iteration of the bill empowered voters to decide the election date as a ballot question during the Nov. 3 general election.
While claiming during Tuesday’s meeting that a majority of her West Ward constituents support moving the election, Vaughn didn’t explain why she double backed on holding the referendum.
McBride suggested the only reason council revisited the ordinance was because of “some type of error” in the previous bill.
Internal correspondence obtained by The Trentonian shows that council’s attorney, Edward Kologi, reached out to city law director John Morelli in January suggesting New Jersey law didn’t require a referendum to change election dates.
“My issue is wit [sic] Section 2 of [former city clerk Dwayne Harris’] draft which refers to a referendum to effectuate this change of date,” Kologi wrote Jan. 29. “NJSA 40:457.1 makes no mention of a referendum, and the statute cited by Dwayne, NJSA 40:69A-25.1b, relates to changes in the form of Government. If I am missing something here, please let me know. Otherwise it appears that only an Ordinance is necessary to change the date, not a referendum. Thank you.”
Morelli said Wednesday that while he agrees with Kologi’s interpretation of the statute, nothing in the law precludes legislators from choosing to enact the change by vote.
“It may not be a good idea, but it’s lawful,” he said of Ordinance 20-51. “Quite honestly, when they were doing it by referendum, I thought that was a better option.”
Once changed, a provision in the law keeps Trenton from changing the election date by ordinance again for a decade, Morelli said.
Enough Damage?
Not everyone was poohpoohing the bid to change the election date.
Mike Ranallo, a West Ward resident who recently asked the Trenton Board of Ethics to investigate council’s decision to privately discuss a redevelopment pitch with the interested party, called it a “great idea.”
He touted an estimate from former city clerk Harris who suggested moving the election to the fall could save Trenton as much as $181,000.
The capital city spent more than $237,723 on printing, advertising, equipment rentals, workers and reimbursements to the county for the 2018 municipal race.
“I think that’s a fear tactic people are using,” Ranallo said of the six-month extension. “Seriously, what’s six more months? Let’s hope they wouldn’t purposely burn the city down.”
For Bernard McMullan, who co-chaired the Recall Robin Vaughn committee, six months is enough time for city leaders to “do a fair amount of damage.”
“It’s a half-baked idea being decided for 40,000 [voting] residents by seven people,” he said. “It’s sort of unconscionable and unethical.”
He cited many of the city problems that have arisen as a result of the dysfunctional dynamic between Gusciora and legislators, including the attempted sale of the historic Roebling Wire Works building, which has sparked an investigation from the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office.
The city could also have control of Trenton Water Works wrested from it this week, as a state court judge is set to hear arguments in a lawsuit that will determine the future of the public utility.
The Department of Environmental Protection sued the city this year for not complying with two state consent orders that set deadlines for lead service line replacement and other projects.
DEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe said the council left her agency with little choice but to sue after the legislative body voted down $83 million in bond funding for improvements to TWW.
Since then, the municipalities of Hamilton, Ewing and Lawrence joined the DEP lawsuit. They have asked Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy to force the sale of the public utility or award them an ownership stake.
Edward DeHope, the attorney representing the city, has advised council to pass the bonds, which go before legislators again Thursday, the same day of the hearing.
Some legislators indi
cated they may support the bonds after a key concession from the administration on a forensic audit.
Gusciora was against doing the financial deep dive but softened his stance.
The council approved a walk-on resolution that will be voted on Thursday
for a $250,000 contract to a firm that will perform the forensic audit.
McMullan alluded to other “circus sideshow issues” that kick-started the Vaughn recall effort.
The biggest was her homophobic meltdown during a COVID-19 call.
Vaughn attacked Gusciora and councilman Joe Harrison, telling the latter to, “Continue to suck Reed Gusciora’s d**k all you want to, motherf**ker.”
Residents attempted to recall Vaughn, Gusciora and Harrison, though the Harrison ouster campaign quickly faltered.
McMullan said the Vaughn recall committee gathered between 800 to 900 petition signatures, short of the 3,600 required to force a recall vote.
While the committee has till October, the cochair conceded the recall effort, hampered by the COVID-19 crisis, is dead
but was largely symbolic.
With that in Vaughn’s rear-view mirror, McMullan found it tone-deaf that she’ll be voting for something to keep herself in power longer.
“Why should these [legislators] be deserving of a 13 percent increase on their terms?” he said. “By law, that’s possible. But if everyone is for it, why isn’t it going to referendum? They don’t trust the voters?”