Courier Editorial - November 1, 2007

Why the Middletown Republican Party,
committee majority are corrupt

word from the Publisher

By JIM PURCELL

    The Middletown Committee is impure in at least some actions because it is inherently conflicted, subjugated to the will of one person: Middletown Republican Chairman Peter Carton.
    Mr. Carton selects the candidates for office in the GOP, influences who is appointed on nearly all of the township boards and commissions, and serves as a Middletown Water and Sewer commissioner (a paid post with benefits and even a retirement), and his firm is the bond counsel in town. By the way, Mr. Carton is in charge of the public finance arm of his Newark law firm, and so Middletown is his client.
    In addition, Mr. Carton represents developers in town on occasion, and his clients have not been known to have a hard time with the appointees that Mr. Carton has agreed to being on boards and commissions, or the elected people (whom Mr. Carton selected and controls their political careers). So, in Middletown, it is good to be Mr. Carton's friend, because he controls a lot of what happens.
    Here is the problem: The township of Middletown, the governing body, and the various boards and commissions should not exist to serve Mr. Carton, his friends or clients. Instead, I think they should serve the taxpayers and residents of Middletown. Since Mr. Carton's opinion is far more important than any other opinion in town right now, I'm pretty sure that this should change. Mr. Carton, a Middletown taxpayer, deserves to have an opinion and express it, but does not deserve to have a majority opinion over all taxpayers by virtue of his position in politics and government. He certainly should not have received the bond business he has from the municipality, because this looks and is atrocious insofar as public trust.
    Mayor Gerard Scharfenberger and his running mate may be good elected officials, but I do not think anyone will ever find out, since Mr. Carton is the boss, the guy who makes the decisions and the one who is really calling the shots in Middletown. The fact that the elected people on the governing body have accepted the situation regarding Mr. Carton's many hats speaks to their characters, and what it says is nothing meritorious.
    One of the criticisms I have had of Middletown is the amount of municipal bonding, and the more than $80 million it owes in debt. Debt is something that erodes the fiber of communities - like it has in Middletown. No family can carry large credit card debts, just like the way no community can have, as a defect, an over-willingness to bond.
    And the way to fix it is to stop running the credit card through the machine every 5 minutes. That idea is a lot easier to do when the most powerful political boss in town is not the chairman of the dominant political party, with much to say in county politics because of his political/economic/governmental control of the county's largest municipality.
    This is why the Middletown Committee majority and the Middletown GOP are corrupt, and that is why the GOP should not hold office in town right now - because it has a problem. Republicans in Middletown should take stock, fix their condition and try something else then try and make a case for promoting candidates for public service.