Pay-to-Play Petition Group's Lawsuit to Go to Trial Next Month

A watchdog group seeking a pay-to-play ban in Gloucester Township will have its lawsuit heard in Superior Court next month.

Superior Court Judge Louis R. Meloni has set July 10 as the date for a plenary hearing in Berry v. DiJosie.

It is expected Meloni will rule on the fate of the citizen group's petition drive at that time.

South Jersey Citizens (SJC), a group consisting mostly of conservative Gloucester Township residents, filed the lawsuit against Township Clerk Rosemary DiJosie in April after the clerk twice denied the group's pay-to-play petition on the recommendations of Township Solicitor David Carlamere.

Meloni made a few rulings last Friday during a hearing at the Camden Hall of Justice.

The judge ruled a petition form had to be disqualified because it was circulated by someone other than the circulator who had signed the form. He also reportedly ruled in favor of the township's claim SJC did not properly remedy notarization issues with several forms that initially had been authenticated by a Pennsylvania notary public—a violation of New Jersey petition laws.

"The township is very happy with the judge's rulings because they mostly were what we had asked for," Carlamere told the Courier-Post for a report published Saturday.

SJC released a statement Saturday in which executive director Tom Crone expressed optimism in part due to Meloni's ruling that signatures on petitions circulated by individuals who are not part of the five-member petition committee are valid.

"The rule of law was upheld and a major legal issue has been clarified in an otherwise convoluted process,” Crone said in the statement.

SJC is being represented by Renee Steinhagen, of Newark-based New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center. Josh Berry, the plaintiff identified in the case name, is SJC's political director.

"Pay to play" is the phrase used to describe campaign contributors being awarded government contracts by the officials they help get elected.

The petition committee initially submitted its petition, with a total of 1,268 signatures, to the clerk on Feb. 13

DiJosie rejected the petition on Feb. 28 and again on March 14.

A May 18 Courier-Post report indicated the Camden County Prosecutor's Office was forwarded several affidavits that challenge the petition, including one signed by an individual who purportedly had signed the SJC petition but later claimed the document put before her, which she also asserted she circulated to others, dealt with a youth program, not public-contract law.

Carlamere told the paper that "several issues of false swearing and possible petition switching that should not be evaluated by the clerk or council or the township administration" were raised in that affidavit and the four others signed by township voters whose signatures were among those SJC submitted to the clerk.