file photo by Boyd Loving
Ridgewood under fire for closed session
MARCH 11, 2015, 11:59 AM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 12:10 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD – A councilwoman with three sons in line for village police jobs claims several officials broke the law last month by meeting behind closed doors to discuss changes to Ridgewood’s residency requirement.
“This belonged in open session,” Councilwoman Susan Knudsen insisted at a recent council meeting, noting no specific village employee’s position was discussed during the closed-door meeting, but rather a policy relating to Ridgewood’s hiring practices.
“We did not follow the law,” Knudsen said. “That’s not an allegation, it’s a fact.”
But Village Attorney Matthew Rogers maintains officials acted appropriately, saying “the topic under discussion” by the council that evening “fit into the exceptions” outlined in the Open Public Meetings Act.
The village’s labor attorney also concluded the council did not violate the law.
“Generally, at the time the decision was made, it is my understanding there was reason to believe such discussions could impact upon the terms and conditions of employment of specific prospective employees or employee groups,” said Beth Hinsdale-Piller.
Knudsen opposes any change to the requirement.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/ridgewood-under-fire-for-closed-session-1.1286592
Boy the Village paid attorneys are scrambling to protect the 3 amigos and their jobs.
So the Councilwoman’s kids took a police test and passed so what. What are they second class citizens because their mother is a Councilwoman.
Going into closed session = specific personnel on the agenda. Otherwise these deliberations need to be done in public according to the law. This seems to have been done as part of an elaborate charade intended to pressure Councilwoman Knudsen into recusing herself from the proceedings, which she did do, and probably more advantageously from the petspective of the Three Amigos, to (illegally?) hide critical deliberations about an important change in municipal law from immediate public view. In pressing her point now, Councilwoman Knudsen need not concern herself with the after-the-fact and arguably strained legal justifications of hired attorneys. BTW, why didn’t the news article mention the recusal part of this whole affair, including the unsolicited bad advice Councilwoman Knudsen received in advance? She has certainly never been shy about it, having raised it in full public view at the next VC meeting.
“BTW, why didn’t the news article mention the recusal part of this whole affair,” Well 9:16 thats because the article was written by CHRIS HARRIS the Mayors Press Secretary
We should be hiring for the RPD and RFD from surrounding communitie slike Paramus, Glen Rock, Midland Park, Waldwick and Ho Ho Kus… will give the Village access to a great pool of applicants and prevent our reliance on legacy candidates which literally prevents new blood in these departments.
why does she oppose a change to the requirement?
Boy 8:07, Ms. Knudsen is scrambling to protect the residency requirements with three sons in line for village police jobs, claiming several officials broke the law last month by meeting behind closed doors to discuss changes to Ridgewood’s residency requirement.She alleges the law was broken, but Village Attorney Matthew Rogers maintains officials acted appropriately, saying “the topic under discussion” by the council that evening “fit into the exceptions” outlined in the Open Public Meetings Act, and the village’s labor attorney also concluded the council did not violate the law. There you have it. Seems like Ms. Knudsen owes the officals she publically slandered an apolgy.
Why 9:31 you looking for a jib?
Why 9:31 you looking for a job?
Step 1: Ignore a law giving local residents hiring priority until those same residents’ memory of it begins to fade. Step 2: Taking steps to shield your action from public view, codify the injustice. Step 3: Accuse detractors of incivility.
Looks like somebody messed up on the first part of step 2. Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and men….
Can we impeach these 3 clowns..?
9:45am, don’t you dare lay this malfeasance at Councilwoman Knudsen’s feet. The tone you’re employing is transparently condescending. What’s more, the way you sachet past the real issue shows that the cited relationship between Ms. Knudsen and three mere test-takers is nothing but a red herring. During the decades-long time period this hiring law was being ignored or flouted, many, many Ridgewood residents must have been improperly pushed down the list of candidates in favor of non-residents.
This is no time to change the law to fit the improper hiring practices. Before we think about doing anything else, we need to amend the hiring practices to fit the law as it currently stands.
And not for nothing, but doesn’t this huge push to change the law, replete with a blatant Sunshine Law violation and a too-free and arguably convenient imputation of bias and reckless accusation of slander on the part of Councilwoman Knudsen, demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in their heart of hearts (even if not reflected in their public utterances), the powers that be and their village-paid advisors are personally persuaded that current hiring practices are in clear violation of current law?
“There you have it.”
There you have what, 9:45am? A town attorney’s opinion is not a judge’s ruling! Not by a long shot.
For all you know, Councilwoman Knudsen is correct, and paid attorney opinions to the contrary are all dead wrong. That is, unless you are an attorney yourself and care to enlighten the clueless mouth breathers in your midst?
9:45
Remember the three of you promised CIVILITY. Your posting is far from civil. For one of the three of you to attack councilwoman knudsen is despicable, but it is what we have come to expect from you. We have seen it too many times.
10:42-
Bet your bottom dollar that 9:45 is an attorney. The tone of the posting has one certain elected attorney written all over it.
so sue, sue
Uh, Roberta’s a resident and Gabbert was not…
So they’re not her sons but “mere test takers” ? You mean the RPD and RFD have ignored the residency requirement for new hires over a “decades-long time period” and that “this hiring law was being ignored or flouted”? You say “many, many Ridgewood residents must have been improperly pushed down the list of candidates in favor of non-residents.” In the RPD? Please name names.
All this complaining about the so called three idiots why is it that no has looked into a recall to see if they can be removed from office.
Just remember who pays Mr. Rogers and Ms. Hinsdale. Yes; the 3 Amigos.
Read the story and try to comprehend that this is not about police and fire but about certain municipal position not all.
Thats it blame Ms. Knudsen The three amigos apologist are posting again. . Attack Knudsen Walish and Zuzy Yes some poster will remember Zuzy go arounds with our Mayor. Seeing a pattern yet?
We can give you this, 11:04 am, you are one relentless, ink-spurting squid!
Unfortunately for you, you’ve just highlighted perhaps the best reason why Councilwoman Knudsen need never have concerned herself with any potential conflict-of-interest: Potentially eliminating the RPD’s and the RFD’s legally-imposed hiring preference for qualified local residents was NEVER ON THE AGENDA.
Other items relating to village hiring practices for other municipal jobs may have been up for discussion, but never the local hiring practices relating to police or firemen. (And certainly nothing on the agenda necessitated closing the session.)
This is also why it is so clearly a red herring for anyone to bring up her relationship to the test-takers. They are not even candidates for any of the positions or categories of positions being looked at by the VC for potential changes in the law relating to hiring practices!
What do we care about what relationship the test-takers have or don’t have with Councilwoman Knudsen? What’s the relevance?
They are her sons you vampire squid ! What municipal positions are you referring to? Instead of just innuendo and false claims, explain exactly which qualified resident was passed over for a “certain municipal position” by a non-resident? Name names. 10:33 and 1:31 are the same person using “red herring” incorrectly again in relation to her sons… so exactly WHO, “During the decades-long time period this hiring law was being ignored or flouted” are the “many, many Ridgewood residents who’ve been improperly pushed down the list of candidates in favor of non-residents?” Please give specific examples. If you can’t, then stop your false accusations and slanderous posts.
Look out below, Mr. P is about to blow a gasket. Stay tuned. It will be hilarious
mr. P is getting ready to blow. Sit back and enjoy the show. Must see TV
Nobody cares whether RPD or RFD test-takers have any relationship with a current member of the Village Council or not. Yet you won’t stop talking about it. It has no relevance to the topic at hand. Your continued harping on it seems to show that you are trying to sow general confusion or to deflect attention from the topic immediately at hand (namely: non-police and non-firefighter municipal hiring practices in Ridgewood). Is this not the textbook definition of a red herring? If so, can we please be forgiven for ignoring it?
A municipality that flouts or ignores the law in question for 25 years MUST BE consistently failing deliberately to give priority to qualified candidates who actually live within its borders. Thus, its hiring practices are literally out of control and must be amended immediately.
Most qualified potential candidates who are also local residents are likely to be unaware of the law operating in their favor because the management of the municipality has itself forgotten about its requirements. That’s a heck of a lot of ignorance, institutional and otherwise. The likelihood of such collective ignorance and lack of management control producing many, many violations of the law in question over a twenty-five year period is objectively high.
More particularly, the municipality in question will be extremely lucky if one or more such violations did not occur within the one, two, three, six-year period (whatever it happens to be) specified by the statute of limitations (i.e., the recent past) such that the hiring decision(s) is either currently subject to being ‘undone’ as a result of a well-pled lawsuit, or will be held to have triggered liability for money damages awardable to the plaintiff behind the suit.
You are asking someone to simply name for you any and all Ridgewood residents in the past twenty-five years who were qualified and applied for a position with the village and were improperly turned down in favor of respective out-of-town applicants.
With all due respect, and at least in this forum, this is a preposterous demand. If you are curious about the potential scope of the village’s liability for current and past violations of the hiring practices law in question, you should conduct your own investigation. Pounding your fists at the insufficiency of a collection of comments on a local blog accomplishes nothing and, frankly, makes you look like a fish out of water (or worse).
OTOH, Nobody here ultimately wishes anyone ill. The issues and good governance are what count, and your time was not wasted if you would just try to broaden your perspective to include more than just the political, or the tactical.
So basically you’ve got nothing. Make outrageous accusations but then back them up with the square root of nothing. Having sons (“test takers” in your conflicted terms, they are her sons to be factual) applying for Village jobs is straight conflict of interest on any discussion of hiring , CBAs, etc. She’ll need to recuse herself from any discussions of hiring, CBAs, etc for the RPD just like Killion did.
You said “A municipality that flouts or ignores the law in question for 25 years MUST BE consistently failing deliberately to give priority to qualified candidates who actually live within its borders. Thus, its hiring practices are literally out of control and must be amended immediately.”
But you cannot give a single e a,ple of this. Not one. You should try to broaden your perspective to include actual factual claims to back up your accusations and innuendo. Otherwise your are just trolling this blog with unsubstantiated false claims.
Suit yourself. 6:54. But answer this question: If Village management has by some miracle of divine providence avoided liability with every hiring decision despite 25 years of utter ignorance of the law, as you seem to be suggesting with your head-in-the-sand/see-no-evil, approach, why go through the trouble of changing the law? In other words, if current hiring practices don’t violate the law, as you seem to be suggesting, why change the law in such a way as to render current hiring practices (i.e., preferring a qualified village resident over a more qualified non-resident) illegal?
Here are the exceptions (1 through 9) to the New Jersey Open Public Meetings Act. Councilwoman Knudsen is correct. The Village Council appears to have been poorly advised. Plans to discuss potential changes to the law requiring preferential hiring of residents for certain non-police and non-firefighter positions fall under exactly none of these exceptions, and thus cannot by law be confined to a closed session. Ridgewood needs to admit the mistake, pay the fine and re-do the discussion including posting the agenda in advance and inviting public participation.
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N.J.S.A. 10:4-12. Meetings open to public; exclusion of public; subject matter of discussion
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a. Except as provided by subsection b. of this section all meetings of public bodies shall be open to the public at all times. Nothing in this act shall be construed to limit the discretion of a public body to permit, prohibit or regulate the active participation of the public at any meeting, except that a municipal governing body and a board of education shall be required to set aside a portion of every meeting of the municipal governing body or board of education, the length of the portion to be determined by the municipal governing body or board of education, for public comment on any governmental or school district issue that a member of the public feels may be of concern to the residents of the municipality or school district.
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b. A public body may exclude the public only from that portion of a meeting at which the public body discusses:
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(1) Any matter which, by express provision of federal law or State statute or rule of court shall be rendered confidential or excluded from the provisions of subsection a. of this section.
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(2) Any matter in which the release of information would impair a right to receive funds from the Government of the United States.
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(3) Any material the disclosure of which constitutes an unwarranted invasion of individual privacy such as any records, data, reports, recommendations, or other personal material of any educational, training, social service, medical, health, custodial, child protection, rehabilitation, legal defense, welfare, housing, relocation, insurance and similar program or institution operated by a public body pertaining to any specific individual admitted to or served by such institution or program, including but not limited to information relative to the individual’s personal and family circumstances, and any material pertaining to admission, discharge, treatment, progress or condition of any individual, unless the individual concerned (or, in the case of a minor or incompetent, his guardian) shall request in writing that the same be disclosed publicly.
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(4) Any collective bargaining agreement, or the terms and conditions which are proposed for inclusion in any collective bargaining agreement, including the negotiation of the terms and conditions thereof with employees or representatives of employees of the public body.
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(5) Any matter involving the purchase, lease or acquisition of real property with public funds, the setting of banking rates or investment of public funds, where it could adversely affect the public interest if discussion of such matters were disclosed.
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(6) Any tactics and techniques utilized in protecting the safety and property of the public, provided that their disclosure could impair such protection. Any investigations of violations or possible violations of the law.
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(7) Any pending or anticipated litigation or contract negotiation other than in subsection b. (4) herein in which the public body is, or may become a party.
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Any matters falling within the attorney-client privilege, to the extent that confidentiality is required in order for the attorney to exercise his ethical duties as a lawyer.
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(8) Any matter involving the employment, appointment, termination of employment, terms and conditions of employment, evaluation of the performance of, promotion or disciplining of any specific prospective public officer or employee or current public officer or employee employed or appointed by the public body, unless all the individual employees or appointees whose rights could be adversely affected request in writing that such matter or matters be discussed at a public meeting.
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(9) Any deliberations of a public body occurring after a public hearing that may result in the imposition of a specific civil penalty upon the responding party or the suspension or loss of a license or permit belonging to the responding party as a result of an act or omission for which the responding party bears responsibility.
Who hired Tommy Boy Rica over a qualified resident? That guys was a low life thug. Why do we have Hudson County mafia scum like him working over qualified Ridgewood residents? The guy betrayed the public trust by stealing hundreds of thousands in quarters from the Village.
The decision to close this discussion to the public flies in the face of the rationale for having closed discussions, which is the need to maintain confidentiality of information or legal advice. The critical word here is “Specific”. No specific current or prospective employee’s situation was to be discussed. Only the generic (meaning equally applicable to all employees in a given category) hiring policy was on the agenda. The after-the-fact rationalizations of OPMA violation that took place here are weak and unpersuasive.
It is absolutely hilarious how the three amigos are running on defense. How much sleep did you three get in the last couple of nights? You messed up big time this time, and you know it. Matt rogers weak statement that the law was not violated means nothing. He said a discussion COULD have gone into specifics, but for that matter ANY discussion can drift. Mr. rogers is a nice man and a smart man. But he works for THEM. His job could be at risk if he sold them down the river. Over and over we hear him defend all their questionable actions. We need an independent attorney who will not risk employment by stating the truth on this apparent violation of the OPMA.