| The Toms River School Board had a 4.5 hour "informal meeting" Saturday, two days after the FBI raided the home of Superintendent Michael Ritacco, the school board offices and the home of a long-time employee. At the end of that meeting, Board President Betty Vasil emerged and announced there would be no suspension, or firing, of Ritacco.
Just because the school isn't taking action doesn't mean the issue goes away without further question. Will our law-and-order Governor and his Education Commissioner Bret Schundler will be quick to call for Ritacco - whose star is (was?) rising in the GOP as an education policy advisor and Christie's Transition Team member - to resign if indicted? Christie was mighty quick calling for the resignation of all the politicians caught up in last summer's corruption sweep. So far he's just said he hopes Ritacco isn't in trouble, but if he is, he'll have to pay the price.
And something that came up 3 months ago in Toms River also raises some questions.
School boards are required by state law to conduct performance evaluations of Superintendents. Standard procedure. But there were some sticky conflicts of interest to be worked out before the Board could move forward, and what was required by the guidelines of an Advisory Ethics opinion they were required to invoke a Doctrine of Necessity which spells out the conflicts of interest, requires the Board to make them public, and allows them to move forward with the evaluation (Plainfield also did this this year).
The Toms River document spells out the conflicts of interest, a list of daughters, wives, sons and sisters who are employed in the service of Toms River's school children. So, some questions:
3 months ago, the Board was unable to generate a quorum because of conflict of interest until they completed the Doctrine of Necessity process. Does that Doctrine, and the conflicts it made public 3 months ago, carry forward to the Board's ability to make a decision Saturday? Or was further disclosure required of them?
Was Saturday's meeting "informal" because of the conflicts of interest, and they needed to invode the Doctrine? If not, does the Board have an existing conflict that prevents a quorum from taking further action on Ritacco? And we'd like some clarification on what the Board means when they say they held an "informal" meeting. If it is a meeting covered under the law of the Open Public Meetings Act, it is a formal meeting of the body. If they are either in Executive Session or a public meeting open to attendance by residents, those are both formal meetings covered by the law. If the meeting was held under the aegis of the Open Public Meetings Act, there are rules they are required to follow that require transparency, either by discussion before the public or in sanctioned executive session, and there are rules in place about how and why boards can go into executive session. So, which was it? Were minutes taken of this meeting? If the meeting was in compliance with the law, and was a public meeting, the minutes should be made available. If the discussion about Ritacco was held in executive session (which employment questions routinely are) and was in compliance with the law, then minutes should be available whenever the Board no longer is required to consider Ritacco's employment in terms of the FBI raid.
Gilmore & Monahan,11th most powerful firm in NJ, represents the Board. George Gilmore is the powerful GOP political boss of Ocean County. Given that the GOP has a lot at stake in the reputation of Ritacco, who advised Chris Christie as a member of the governor's Transition Team, should the Board be consulting with a firm that may have conflicts of their own, or have the appearance of conflict?
I don't know the answer to these questions, but I'd bet they're the same ones a lot of people in Toms River are asking. This is a developing story. Bet on it. |
