Harrison to propose tightening hiring policies after Trenton makes ‘giant mistake’ on Conlon
TRENTON » Never again.
East Ward councilman Joe Harrison said Friday he’ll introduce legislation in the coming weeks to strengthen the vetting process for prospective city employees following shocking revelations about clerk Matthew Conlon’s checkered past.
The ordinance will shore up existing hiring practices and policies and create new ones making it tougher for candidates with questionable backgrounds to slip through the cracks.
“I want it to be more transparent, so we won’t have a situation like this come up again,” Harrison told The Trentonian. “This was a giant mistake.”
Harrison was one of at least two council members who couldn’t attend Conlon’s hiring interview due to a scheduling conflict.
Council leadership wouldn’t reschedule the interview, so Harrison couldn’t ask Conlon probing questions about Conlon’s background.
Mayor Reed Gusciora admitted in an interview that not enough was done to vet Conlon before he was unanimously approved by council as clerk in August at a salary of $122,000.
The city now requires candidates to provide copies of credentials after it was forced to hire an outside law firm to research whether Conlon has the credentials he listed on his resume.
That was before a Trentonian expose revealed Conlon was charged with a felony in another state and had problems in New Jersey municipalities where he worked before coming to Trenton.
Conlon, who has survived two Rice attempts, faces a second law firm probe into employee allegations that he’s created a hostile work environment at City Hall.
In her first public statement since the Conlon expose, council president Kathy McBride said Thursday that all existing policies and procedures were adhered to in the hiring of Conlon.
McBride said she didn’t have the authority to order the bypassing of a background check for Conlon, who was previously clerk in Highlands Borough.
The Department of Community Affairs, which oversees the city under a Memorandum of Understanding, ensures each employee has a criminal background check, and passes a physical and drug screening, McBride said. DCA said Friday that Trenton informed the agency that it conducted a background check on Conlon before he was hired. “There is no individual on this body that can waive a background check,” Mc
Bride said.
McBride faces an ethics complaint from resident Mike Ranallo, who alleged her favoritism allowed Conlon to bypass a background check.
His complaint was based off representations that Gusciora made in interviews with The Trentonian claiming that McBride rejected an offer from thenlaw director John Morelli to exhaustively vet Conlon.
“She told him to butt
out,” Gusciora said.
Morelli hasn’t responded to phone calls seeking comment.
City spokesman Williams Skaggs said Friday that city employees are subjected to “two different evaluation processes” before they’re hired.
In Conlon’s case, Skaggs said it was council’s responsibility to verify Conlon’s resume and check references but the law department’s offered to help.
After that, personnel conducted a criminal background check on Conlon.
McBride said during civic comment that council interviewed candidates with Registered Municipal Clerk certificates who responded to the advertised position.
Applicants were “graded and evaluated,” McBride said, and an offer letter was sent to Conlon, who has since been granted a residency waiver after initially agreeing to relocate to the capital city.
The hiring process was then “turned over” to the personnel officer Steve Ponella, McBride said.
Ponella processed paperwork for the New Jersey State Police to conduct a criminal background investigation on Conlon.
Those checks reveal if someone was arrested, charged or convicted of a crime in New Jersey unless records were expunged, according to the State Police website.
It’s unlikely the New Jersey criminal check would have revealed the felony charge that Conlon faced in Florida in 2003, officials said.
Gusciora admitted the city didn’t do a criminal
search for Conlon outside New Jersey despite his resume showing that he worked out of state.
The mayor defended Ponella saying it was up to council to dig deeper into Conlon’s past.
In the Florida case, Conlon was accused of seizing control of his disabled aunt Joan Nicholson’s estate and mismanaging more than $100,000 of her finances.
Nicholson, who suffered from muscular sclerosis, died while the case was pending. Prosecutors nolled the charge in 2005.
Conlon insisted in interviews that his cousin — with the same name and birthday — was the one charged with the felony. Records showed Conlon the clerk was the person charged in the case.
McBride hasn’t responded to multiple phone calls and an email with a detailed list of questions about the efforts legislators took to vet Conlon’s application and resume.
At-large councilman Jerell Blakeley said that he called many of Conlon’s references but never heard back from them.
Records obtained by The Trentonian showed that Conlon and Longport Borough negotiated a mutual non-disparagement clause as part of a $22,000 settlement that Conlon received after he was not reappointed clerk in 2018.
Blakeley said he was satisfied with Conlon’s answer about the settlement when asked about it during the hiring interview.
It wasn’t until a council meeting once Conlon was already on the job that Blakeley expressed reservations about the clerk. They came after Conlon threatened to sue Blakeley for questioning his legal background. Dumbfounded by the clerk’s reaction, Blakeley conducted a degree verification of Conlon through the National Student Clearinghouse, which confirmed that the clerk received his juris doctorate from Widener School of Law in 1996.
Conlon falsely claimed separate degree verifications conducted by Blakeley and The Trentonian were unlawful.
The Trentonian revealed it couldn’t corroborate Conlon’s claim that he passed the 2012 New Jersey bar exam.
His name isn’t on lists of candidates who passed the New Jersey bar exam from 2010 to 2020, leading the city to hire the outside firm to further probe the matter.
Conlon later produced a heavily redacted letter at a meeting purportedly from the state Board of Bar Examiners showing he passed the February 2012 test.
Judiciary officials have declined to authenticate the letter, saying those records are available only to bar applicants.
The state Attorney General’s Office has since served a subpoena on the state Supreme Court Clerk’s Office for Conlon’s records, a judiciary spokesman confirmed.