Township Again Rejects Citizens' Pay-to-Play Petition

For the second time in a little more than two weeks, township officials on Wednesday ruled a citizens' group seeking a ballot question on its proposed pay-to-play ban has failed to meet legal standards.

Less than an hour after learning Clerk Rosemary DiJosie had ruled its petition drive had failed, South Jersey Citizens (SJC) vowed to fight the ruling in court.

In a letter sent by email to SJC's pay-to-play petition committee Wednesday evening, DiJosie notes that while her office validated more than the 1,047 signatures required to qualify the proposed measure for either a vote by Council or placement on the November ballot, Solicitor David Carlamere has ruled the group did not properly remedy deficiencies he previously noted with the petition the watchdog group had originally submitted to the clerk on Feb. 13.

A message Patch left with the Clerk's Office at around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday was not returned.

SJC petition committee members had indicated over the past 15 days that they anticipated Carlamere would rule against their remedies.

"We thank the clerk and her staff for the hard work and diligence they showed in this process. We disagree with the solicitor's opinion and will seek the advice of counsel immediately," SJC Executive Director Tom Crone said Wednesday night in a statement. "If the courts must determine the outcome, so be it."

According to the letter DiJosie forwarded to the petition committee, her office validated a total of 1,091 township residents' signatures, or 44 more than the required 1,047, since Feb. 13. That 1,091 figure includes 77 signatures submitted since the committee was notified on Feb. 28 that its petition would not be certified.

Carlamere cited a total of 504 signatures as invalid due to their being on "deficient" petition forms.

The solicitor first opined in his letter to DiJosie that the committee did not properly remedy 13 petition forms—11 of which SJC initially had notarized by a Pennsylvania-licensed notary public and two of which had signatures in the wrong places on forms. The law governing such petition drives under the state's so-called Faulkner Act requires the notary public be licensed where the measure is proposed.

The solicitor noted in his opinion to the clerk that when Crone and SJC political director Joshua Berry presented affidavits to her office on March 9—the deadline to correct the initially identified deficiencies, as noted by the township on Feb. 28, under the 10-day remedy period—the affidavits were not attached to the original petitions nor were the notary public or any of the circulators who signed the affidavits present.

"This act alone raises a serious question of credibility as to which document (petition) the person was attesting to and to which document the Notary Public was providing authenticity," Carlamere wrote.

In publicly labeling Carlamere a pay-to-player on several occasions in recent months, SJC members and Republican operatives have questioned the solicitor's credibility on the proposed pay-to-play ordinance and other matters, including vendor selection.

Carlamere has denied his connections to the Democratic Party have swayed his legal decisions or the advice he offers to township officials.

Berry has claimed Carlamere is "dead wrong" on his opinion that petition circulators under the Faulkner Act's initiative-and-referendum process must be members of the five-man committee. That opinion resulted in Carlamere ruling that 299 signatures DiJosie had validated had to be struck from consideration.

In the ruling he forwared to DiJosie, Carlamere reiterated his opinion that the petition is invalid because four individuals who are not on the five-man committee, which consists of Crone, Berry, SJC membership coordinator Elizabeth Holzman, and SJC members Robbie Traylor and Don Choyce, had collected signatures.

Following Carlamere's opinions against SJC remedies on the contested petition forms, the committee is left with just 587 validated signatures to count toward the 1,047 necessary for its measure to advance to Council and, if necessary, the November ballot.