Courier Editorial - January 10, 2008

Life is pretty comfortable for Peter Carton & Co.

word from the Publisher

By JIM PURCELL

    When the Middletown Committee reorganized on Jan. 6 for 2008, it was more of the same when it comes to the township's bond counsel.
    Middletown Republican Chairman Peter Carton, Esq., has been choosing candidates, filling township boards, been open for doing business with real ¬estate clients in town, and has had his Newark law firm serving as bond counsel for years.
    Mr. Carton is a former mayor, committeeman and township attorney. But his career highlights of yesteryear are not as important as what he is today: the unchallenged, all-powerful Republican boss of a township governed by Republicans still in the majority.
    Mr. Carton works for the Newark law firm of Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, where he has done so for many years.
    Likewise, for many years, Mr. Carton's law firm has been performing all of the bond work in the municipality.
    At this year's reorganization, Committeeman Patrick Short, a Democrat, opposed this appointment, as did Mr. Short's Democratic colleague on the governing body, Mr. Sean Byrnes.
    Mayor Gerard Scharfenberger noted that it was unfair to single out Mr. Carton's firm, disqualifying them from service in the township. Mr. Scharfenberger even characterized excluding Mr. Carton's firm as "unconstitutional
    In New Jersey, what is "right" has become synonymous with "that which is not illegal by statute." In New Jersey, no one in elected office seems to be able to tell anyone what is right or wrong without a $200 per hour lawyer next to them. It's strange, because in so many other places in this country and around the globe, what's right and wrong just seems to be common sense and is understood by anyone who happens to be old enough to graduate high school on time.
    Middletown's Republican majority is part of everything that is wrong, unhealthy and unwholesome in dirty politics in this infamously corrupt state.
    It is not illegal for Mr. Carton's firm to get this bond work in Middletown - it is just wrong. I do not need to qualify the obvious, because a small child would see this as common sense.
    Mr. Carton picking the members of boards, or having anything to say about who serves at all in town, is wrong, albeit not illegal. This is even true despite the fact that a company can hire Mr. Carton or his firm to come right on in to Middletown and help them do business. To Mr. Scharfenberger's view, it would be "unconstitutional" not to have the doors to Middletown swung wide open for anyone who wants to do business through Mr. Carton's firm in town. Just because Mr. Carton is the Republican chair, that doesn't mean anything; just because Mr. Carton's firm contributes regularly to the GOP, that doesn't mean anything; and just because Mr. Carton's firm has been appointed by the
governing body to serve as the key professional firm to deal with the town's more than $85 million debt, that doesn't mean anything. My question is: Just when does something start meaning something?
    After all, it is not 'wrong' for Mr. Carton's firm, or even Mr. Carton, to do business in town with these boards or even this committee - even though he selects all the candidates that serve in the GOP, or the Township Committee, or on the boards.
    Life is pretty comfortable in Middletown for Mr. Carton, his company and his colleagues. In a brighter version of local democracy that I have in mind, things wouldn't be quite so comfortable for one firm, which happens to hire the local Republican chieftain.