Falling on Sword Doesn't Clean House

by: Melonie Marano for Freeholder

Mon Jul 30, 2007 at 10:44:18 AM EDT

Of course Coyle and other freeholders are happy. They hope the resignations will give the freeholders absolution for their own sins of omission in the park scandal. Not a chance.

Freeholders cannot escape their responsibility for the waste of tax and fee money at the parks, through the ridiculously low rents offered to key employees, the unnecessary cars and unlimited gas given to workers and the expensive limo rides for park commissioners, complete with champagne.

The buck ultimately stops with the freeholders because they appoint the park commissioners and supply a large chunk of the park budget and because their county treasurer is supposed to have been keeping an eye on financial operations in the park system.

Make the jump.

The resignation of a few commissioners doesn't make the problems go away, it doesn't give the public the right answers and it doesn't get at the root causes of a scandal that seems to include the parks commission, the Freeholders and Somerset County Republicans. In fact, it raises more questions about the actions of all the commissioners and it raises more suspicions about a cover up.

  Why has only one of the four commissioners who will resign admitted to being implicated in the abuses by the legal report?

  Why is one of the four explicitly denying he was implicated?

  Who are the commissioners who were anonymously implicated in the report?

  Why does the Freeholder Board plan on dealing with these resignations in a session closed to the public?

  Why do the Freeholders continue to deny responsibility for commissioners they appointed?

  Why do Somerset Republicans refuse to hold themselves accountable for all the connections among party officials, family members and no-bid contractors?

  Why did the Freeholders fail in their oversight responsibilities?

  Are the Freeholders and Republican Party officials trying to make the commission a scapegoat?

If the Freeholders believe that the problem is just that they happened to pick really bad people to head up the Parks Commission, then that simply works as an example of how poor their decision-making is.  If the problem goes deeper, then the Freeholders are simply showing that they are part of that deeper problem and therefore incapable of solving it.

Scapegoating, secret meetings, and refusing to have a fair and open investigation is NOT leadership.  It is the avoidance of leadership and it cannot be tolerated.