Council Not Budging, Petition Drive Continues

During the last three Township Council meetings, including the Aug. 1 work session, someone from South Jersey Citizens (SJC) has implored the governing body to move its proposed pay-to-play ordinance for a vote.

Three times they've been turned away.

It was Beth Holzman, who is heading the conservative watchdog group's petition drive, on July 25.

It was Joshua Berry, SJC political director, on Aug. 1 and again on Aug. 8.

At the latest meeting, Berry described a committee—a committee that essentially includes, or, perhaps more appropriately, included, just Berry and Councilman Dan Hutchison—that Council President Glen Bianchini set up as a "complete waste of my time and the time of the taxpayers'."

"This committee has not done anything. We have not had any formal meetings. There have been no artifacts produced from this committee," he said.

SJC is now focused on forcing Council to vote on the measure through the Faulkner Act's initiative-and-referendum process.

Should Council shoot down or fail to act on the ordinance, the watchdog group is targeting the April 2012 school boards election for a referendum, but it had not finalized an election date as of last week. It will pick a date to submit the petition in accordance with that decision.

Berry outlined on Monday how he has communicated with Council members, including Hutchison, about the proposed ordinance by email over the past two to three months, with little to no response from the elected officials.

The SJC political director stressed he has answered Council members' expressed concerns over potential ramifications of the ordinance to the best of his ability, even modifying the initially proposed ordinance to address shared-services agreements.

Berry added that he and Hutchison spoke in the municipal building's parking lot following two Council meetings.

With the Holzman-led SJC petition drive now at least three-quarters of the way to its goal, according to SJC's leadership, it's evident the group intends to put its proposal to the people.

"This has got to stop. We need to move this forward. Or you just need to come out and say you're not going to do it," Berry told Council.

Bianchini reiterated Monday that Council is continuing its review of the proposal, as he had told Holzman last month.

"As I stated before, we are still looking at it," he said. "I've asked the (township) solicitor (David Carlamere) to take all the pay-to-plays—there's one that came down from the state as part of the program—and he is in the process of looking at them and comparing them, and giving us that information."

Berry countered that SJC's proposed ordinance is almost verbatim the one that "came down from the state" Department of Community Affairs.

SJC would need about 1,750 signatures from registered township voters, or roughly 10 percent of the number of township voters who went to polls in the 2009 general election, to force Council to vote on the proposed ordinance.

If a governing body chooses to vote down a citizen-proposed ordinance or fails to act on it within 20 days of a municipal clerk certifying the petition, the petitioner, or petitioning group, would have 10 days to withdraw it from consideration.

If the petition is not withdrawn by organizers, the measure must be put to voters the next regularly scheduled election to be held at least 40 days after the expiration of that 10-day withdrawal period.

Should a petitioning group collect signatures from an amount of registered municipal voters equal to 15 percent of those who voted in the last odd-numbered year's general election, the measure goes to the people within 90 days, even if there is not a regularly scheduled election for that time frame. Such action would require a special election.