This guest editorial was Published in today’s editions of The Record and Herald News.
Being a candidate for local office can be thankless position to have
Your Turn
Paul Vagianos Guest columnist
The Record and northjersey.com recently reported that Ridgewood Mayor Ramon Hache was being investigated by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) for failure to correctly report several hundred dollars of campaign contributions (“Ridgewood mayor hit with money complaint,” Page 1L, Oct. 8).
It is important to put this matter into perspective. Mayor Hache was a first-time candidate running for local office as a councilman. ELEC regulations, while critically important to our free and fair electoral process, are a maze of laws and filing requirements that can be confusing to a seasoned veteran of multiple elections. In this instance, the mayor’s campaign treasurer was his wife.
The vast majority of local elections are waged by residents who want to contribute their time and efforts to their town. If you’ve ever attended a local council meeting, you’ve seen that it is perhaps the most thankless job in the world. Most meetings have little or no attendance unless an issue has upset some of the local residents – in which case, watch out.
Those are the meetings that go on for hours, well into the wee hours of the morning with residents criticizing and often attacking local council people. For their efforts, members of the council in Ridgewood are paid $2,500 – the mayor gets $5,000. For the hours they put in, that amount doesn’t even begin to approach the minimum wage. Most people are unwilling to serve their community under these circumstances.
If this isn’t enough to discourage good people from running for local office, ELEC has filed a complaint against a local official because his wife didn’t keep good records of his campaign contributions. To make matters worse, The Record portrayed the matter as something far more serious than what it actually is: a local resident running for office in a small town who didn’t file all the forms correctly.
We’re not talking about someone running for governor or U.S. Senate who can afford to hire a paid professional to ensure that these forms are filed correctly. We’re talking about a local guy who just wanted to give back to his community.
It’s difficult enough to get good people to run for local office. This just makes it that much harder.
Paul Vagianos lives in Ridgewood.
Follow the money….Paul is pretty slippery.
But he set women back 100 years by insinuating his wife can’t do any financial paperwork. If I’m not mistaken she is the breadwinner of that family.
I am no fan of Hache or Vagianos but I agree that making such a noise about a few hundred $ is bullshit. As per difficulty of having “good people” to run for office, forget it. Such race is long gone. Whoever runs is doing it to support their personal agenda or the group/party they’re associated with. Now I understand that Mr. Vagianos might have different standard re: good people from me.
Aren’t there massive amount of Dems surrounding Hache trying to bring him forward up the political line and none of them helped him? How does that work, his wife fills out some of the donations and then falls asleep at the wheel. Sorry, don’t buy this story.
“For their efforts, members of the council in Ridgewood are paid $2,500 – the mayor gets $5,000. For the hours they put in, that amount doesn’t even begin to approach the minimum wage.”
GIVEN THE POOR QUALITY DECISIONS THEY MAKE, THEY SHOULD PAY *US*!
Totally agree with Paul Vagianos.
“Paul Vagianos Guest columnist”
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This is all you need to know.
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How magnanimous it is to throw someone under the bus and then call for an ambulance yourself.
What a snake pit
Paulie Vagianos, what a dishonest sneaky bastard. We all know he dropped the dime on Ramon’s books to make his boy Paulie Aronsohn look a little better. FAIL
…And then Anonymous said, Paul Vagianos doesn’t wear underwear.